EDITORIAL: School tab warrants a ‘yes’ vote

Support the budget and approve both questions – the education of South Brunswick’s students is at stake.

   No one likes tax bills to increase, but sometimes there is little you can do.
   That’s the situation the Board of Education finds itself in this year.
   Faced with growing enrollment, flat state aid and a declining ratable base, the school board has managed to craft a budget that maintains educational programs without recklessly increasing spending.
   The board is proposing a 7.6 percent spending increase for the 2005-2006 school year, to $119.2 million, which will allow for the hiring of new staff to accommodate an estimated 226 new students next year, a state-mandated expansion of the district’s Gifted and Talented program and growth in its after-school programs. It also is contending with increased utility costs caused by rising gas and electric rates and its ongoing school expansion project — which is being undertaken to accommodate the growing student population — contractual salary increases for staff and growing benefit costs.
   Altogether, the budget calls for a 9 percent increase in the school tax rate, from $2.13 per $100 of assessed valuation to $2.32. Voters will determine the fate of 17.6 cents of the increase in two ballot questions; the remaining 1.4 cents of the increase comes from already approved debt. The first question will ask voters to approve an $81.2 million tax levy for general expenses, which will increase the tax rate by 16.8 cents. The second question will ask voters to approve $657,597 in taxes to pay for courtesy and late buses, which would increase the tax rate by 0.8 cents.
   If voters approve both questions, the owner of a house assessed at the township average of $188,600 would pay $4,375.52, up $358.34 from the current school year.
   We believe voters need to approve both questions. We understand that coming up with $20 more a month — along with the inevitable increases in other household expenses — may not be that easy. But voters would be fooling themselves to think that defeating the budget will result in a significant reduction in the tax rate.
   The district would have had to find about $750,000 to $800,000 in unnecessary spending just to shave one cent off the proposed 19-cent tax increase.
   The real problem here is that the district is being asked to accommodate a growing student population at a time when the state faces a serious budget crunch caused in part by ill-conceived tax cuts passed during Christie Whitman’s time as governor. Rather than increase the state income tax, the Legislature and the governor have frozen state aid to schools and towns. This freeze, according to district officials, amounts to a de facto reduction — while the total aid it is receiving has been the same over the last three years, the amount it is receiving per student has been on the decline. District officials estimate that, had state aid per student remained at the 2003 level, the district would have about $1.5 million more available to offset this year’s tax hike — or enough to cut about 2 cents off the rate.
   Add to this the declining ratable base, which is responsible for about 5.4 cents of the increase, and it is clear that the board has been dealt a bad hand.
   Voting "no" will not make that hand any better.