BY JENNIFER DOME
Staff Writer
SEAN BRADY Peter Salmon, 6, Brick, gets some help from his father, Pete, while bowling during the Brick Challengers opening-day event at Sea Girt Lanes in Wall Saturday. Math teachers have always said that students should check their work before deciding if their answer is correct.
And the Brick Township Council has decided the same thing.
The council is expected to retain the services of Frank Marlowe, a former superintendent, to look over the school district’s recent audit to determine if he was correct in his assessment during last year’s budget process.
When voters failed to approve the budget last spring, the council was given the task to review the budget and make cuts if it wanted. The council trimmed 6.2 cents off the proposed tax-rate hike of 15.4-cents per $100 of assessed value after consulting with Marlowe and township financial officials.
The council maintained that there was $9 million in the unrestricted fund balance, meaning there were no obligations made against those funds, but school officials disagreed. According to school Business Administrator Nicholas Puleio, about $3 million of that money was already allocated, so there was only about $5.6 million in the surplus fund.
Now the Township Council may hire Marlowe again to see if they were right, or if school officials were correct.
After Councilman Stephen Acropolis suggested having Marlowe look at the school budget again at the Jan. 4 caucus meeting, Councilman Gregory Kavanagh questioned whether it was worth the money to hire someone just to see who was right and who was wrong.
Council president Ruthanne Scaturro said she wants to understand what happened last year in case the council is given the task of reviewing the 2005-06 school budget.
“[We may find out] there’s no hidden agenda there; there’s no smoke and mirrors,” the council president said.
Township Business Administrator Scott MacFadden said that Marlowe could be hired at an hourly rate, not to exceed a certain amount, so that he can do as much work, or as little work, as the council needs him to do.
Acropolis said that he would like the council to get behind the school board and support the 2005-06 budget, but he wants to understand why there was a discrepancy about last year’s budget figures first.
“This has nothing to do with this year’s budget,” he said. “It has to do with going back.”
When asked what he thought about the council hiring Marlowe again, Superintendent of Schools Thomas Seidenberger said “that’s their prerogative.”
“We stand ready to help the town council understand the intricacies of our budget,” he said.
In December, school officials released the results of the 2003-04 audit performed by Suplee, Clooney & Co., Westfield. All school audits are handled by accounting firms that are specifically licensed by the state to do audits for school districts, according to school officials.
The audit projected that, going into next year’s school budget process, the fund balance, or surplus, stands at $2.7 million, Puleio said. If there is money leftover in the 2004-05 budget, those funds will go into the fund balance and can be used toward the 2005-06 budget.
Even if the fund balance grows by the end of the year, Puleio said that because the fund balance is only at $2.7 million now, the district won’t be able to use nearly the same amount of fund balance as last year to offset the tax levy.
According to Puleio, $4.1 million of the fund balance was used last year to offset the tax levy.
“We correctly projected that we are where we thought we would be,” Seidenberger said last week.
Puleio said the district has never had more in the fund balance than the state allowed. The state used to allow 3-6 percent of the overall budget, but that number was reduced to 3 percent last year. And, with the new state law coming through, S1701, the fund balance must now be kept at 2 percent of the overall budget. Puleio said this would equal about $2 million.
What worries Puleio and Seidenberger about keeping only $2 million in the fund balance is what happens in the case of emergencies. For example, when a large snow storm hits the area, the snow removal is an extraordinary cost.
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to convince the town council that our books are in order,” the superintendent said. “I’m pretty comfortable, I mean, we had an audit by an excellent firm.”
Mayor Joseph Scarpelli said the Township Council should see if they can speak with the auditors before bringing in a third party, Marlowe. He said he doesn’t like that it appears that the council is going after the Board of Education, an autonomous board.
“I don’t see any reason in spending money until they sit down [with the auditors],” Scarpelli said.
Scaturro said Monday that she thinks it’s a smart idea to review what happened last year because not only are township budgets completely different from private business budgets, but school budgets are “a whole new animal.”
“I welcome it; let’s get it over and done with and let’s move on,” Seidenberger said.