BY MARK ROSMAN
Staff Writer
A meeting among municipal officials from three towns produced a decision to study the options available to address a tax inequity.
Representatives of the Freehold Township, Colts Neck and Marlboro governing bodies met at the Freehold Township municipal building on May 16 and reviewed the allocation of the tax levy for the eight municipalities in the Freehold Regional High School District.
The meeting among the municipal officials was closed to the public because it involved the possibility of litigation.
Specifically, the three towns that were involved in the meeting each pay more of the FRHSD tax levy, on a percentage basis, than the number of students, on a percentage basis, that they send to the district.
The FRHSD has a total enrollment of about 11,700 students in six high schools. For the 2006-07 school year, the high school district will operate with a $158.5 million budget. Property owners in the eight towns that make up the district will pay a total tax levy of $100.8 million.
The tax levy is not divided equally among the eight towns, nor is it assessed strictly based on the number of high school students a particular municipality sends to the district, Freehold Township Committeeman Raymond Kershaw said.
The division of the FRHSD tax levy is based on a state formula dating to the 1980s that has been modified several times, he said. It takes into account a municipality’s assessed value as well as the number of elementary school and high school students who live in that community.
“We went over the situation and reviewed the options,” Kershaw said. “We are going to try to put each option into a time frame and determine the cost of those options. The options are primarily legal in nature.”
Kershaw made it clear that the existing situation is not a result of any action taken by FRHSD administrators. This is totally a state created issue, he said.
According to Kershaw, Freehold Township provides 15.6 percent (approximately 1,825) of the district’s students and pays 18.3 percent of the total tax levy. Marlboro provides 23.6 percent (approximately 2,761) of the students and pays 24.9 percent of the tax levy. Colts Neck provides 5.2 percent (approximately 608) of the students and pays 10.4 percent of the tax levy.
The remaining towns provide the following percentage of students and the tax levy:
+ Howell provides 28 percent (approximately 3,276) of the students and pays 21 percent of the tax levy.
+ Manalapan provides 21 percent (approximately 2,457) of the students and pays 20 percent of the tax levy.
+ Freehold Borough provides 4.7 percent (approximately 550) of the students and pays 3.7 percent of the tax levy.
+ Englishtown provides .83 percent (approximately 97) of the students and pays .57 percent of the tax levy.
+ Farmingdale provides .58 percent (approximately 68) of the students and pays .62 percent of the tax levy.
One person who was not pleased to learn about the meeting among the representatives of Freehold Township, Marlboro and Colts Neck was Manalapan Mayor Drew Shapiro.
In a letter to the mayors of the three municipalities, Anthony Ammiano of Freehold Township, Kenneth Florek of Colts Neck, and Robert Kleinberg of Marlboro, Shapiro wrote to “express my disappointment that although Manalapan is part of the FRHSD, we were not invited to participate in the closed door meeting that occurred on May 16.
“The topic of the meeting was to discuss the Freehold Regional’s tax funding formula and it seems unfair that a few towns were excluded from offering their input. It is my hope that any future meetings that might be held will include all of the towns that are a part of the FRHSD,” Shapiro wrote.