EDITORIAL Defeated budgets rarely result in a tax decrease.
South Brunswick voters are likely to end up being disappointed in a couple of weeks.
A hair more than half those that voted against the $119 million school spending plan last week are probably hoping for significant tax relief. The other half, however, were happy with the budget as it was and will likely find any cuts unnecessary.
The budget was defeated last week by a 1,477-1,472 vote a 0.17 percent margin that is hard to fathom (a second question, on courtesy busing, failed by a more significant margin). Consider that had three voters changed their minds and voted yes, the budget would have passed.
It didn’t, of course, and now the Township Council will help determine the budget’s final shape.
Under state law, the council must set a new school tax levy and offer recommended spending cuts if it proposes to reduce the amount to be raised by taxes. The board then has the option of accepting the new levy or appealing the changes to the state education commissioner.
While that sounds simple, it rarely is. The last time the budget failed in 1998 and by a fairly large margin the then-Township Committee made a huge show of cutting the budget, saying it had a responsibility to the voters who had sent it to defeat. In the end, the committee made a lot more noise than cuts, paring just $600,000 from the budget and 1 cent from the proposed tax increase.
The result was a lot of angry seniors, who were seeking more extensive cuts, and a group of not-so-happy parents who thought the committee was being too harsh on the board.
It’s one of the reasons we believe the state should end the practice of having school boards put their budgets before voters. The process tends to be a sham. Voters go to the polls believing they can avoid a tax increase if they vote against the budget, even though the reality is that defeated budgets, at least in South Brunswick, rarely result in significant changes in the proposed tax rate.
This year, for instance, to reduce the proposed tax rate by a penny, the council will have to cut $780,000. A one-penny cut will result in a $19 savings for the owner of the average house not exactly what those angry over tax hikes might have expected.
And then there is turnout. Just 13.7 percent of registered voters turned out this year about 3 percentage points more than last year. That is about a quarter of the number that turn out during non-presidential years for the November general election, meaning that those who vote in school elections are not necessarily a representative sample of the electorate.
The reality is, in those years when the budget passes, it does so because those closest to it, the parents, show up at the polls. When it fails, it often is a result of a small but vocal group getting its people to the polls, inflating the turnout.
The school budget vote is the only one of its kind, the only vote that, in the end, can be ignored. Candidates either win or lose, ballot initiatives and school referendums either pass or fail. Only the school budget puts the voter in the position of advisor, with the ultimate decision on its shape being left to municipal governing bodies, school boards and the state.
That’s not fair to the school board or the taxpayer.