Northern Burlington County Regional School Board officials approve a $250,000 cut in the $30.6 million spending plan, which was rejected by voters last month.
By: William Wichert
The fate of the Northern Burlington County Regional school budget was sealed this week as officials gave their final approval to a $250,000 cut in the $30.6 million spending plan that voters rejected in last month’s school election.
With just a few days before the today’s state-mandated deadline to adopt a budget, the school board approved the cut at its Monday meeting, eliminating funds slated for roof repairs at the high school, said NBCR Superintendent James Sarruda in a phone interview on Tuesday morning.
Dr. Sarruda said postponing these repairs till next year’s budget could lead to delays in future capital projects. "These facility repairs never go away and only get more expensive," he said. "We don’t escape the roof or other capital projects by cutting them out of the budget."
The school board’s move this week to remove $250,000 from its proposed spending plan comes after resolutions to cut the budget were passed over the last two weeks by the governing bodies in each of the four sending municipalities.
Officials in Chesterfield, North Hanover, and Springfield townships followed the lead of Mansfield Township representatives, who recommended the cut because their municipality was the only one to vote down the proposed budget. In Mansfield, voters defeated the budget 799-334.
The budget failed overall with 844 yes votes and 1,165 no votes district-wide on April 19.
Dr. Sarruda said he was pleased that an agreement was reached before the state deadline, but he said he worried that this year’s school election was a sign of a problem bigger than the budget itself: Residents are not supporting their local schools.
"In my opinion, it’s a general consensus that we’re going to vote no," said Dr. Sarruda. "We need to think hard on why that’s happening."
School tax increases are not the primary factor in the defeat of a budget, he said, because Mansfield residents also rejected the elementary school budget, which contained a 1-cent tax decrease.
"To defeat a budget with a tax decrease is a mindset that we’re not going to support the schools," said Dr. Sarruda. "It’s a process we can’t get accustomed to. The (school) system will suffer and there’s no pretending that it won’t."
At the Mansfield Township Committee meeting on May 11, Mayor Arthur Puglia shared a few words before the resolution to cut the regional school budget was unanimously approved. "Mansfield was pretty unified and we got the school to give a quarter of million (dollars) cut in the school budget," said Mayor Puglia.
This $250,000 cut will mean a 1.9-cent reduction in the 10.7-cent tax rate increase that Mansfield was slated to receive in the proposed budget as well as larger tax rate decreases (when compared to the defeated budget) for the other three municipalities.
With the new Mansfield tax rate of $1.169 per $100 of assessed property value, owners of a home assessed at the township average of $168,000 will now be faced with a regional school tax bill of $1,963.92, an increase of $147.84 over last year. The school budget cuts will save the owner of a house assessed at the township average about $31.92 over the original budget proposal, or $2.66 per month.
Chesterfield Township residents will see a 3.8-cent tax rate decrease and a new rate of $1.063 per every $100 of assessed property value, meaning a savings of $80.56 and an annual bill of $2,253.56 for the owners of a home assessed at the township average of $212,000.
North Hanover Township is set to receive a tax rate decrease of 3.1 cents per $100 in assessed value, for a new rate of 94.4 cents per $100 of assessed property value. The owners of a home assessed at the township average of $150,000 will see a savings of $46.50 and an overall bill of $1,416.
The tax rate in Springfield will go down by 54 cents to 69.2 cents per $100 of assessed value, but the tax rate does not necessarily equal a tax savings for Springfield residents, because the assessed values of homes changed under a recent reassessment.
For owners of a home assessed at the new township average of $323,500, the new rate means a new tax bill of $2,238.62.

