By: Rebecca Weltmann
WASHINGTON The school tax levy the amount that has to be raised in taxes to run the school system would increase by 13 percent under the proposed school budget, but how this affects the school tax rate itself was still unclear earlier this week.
At this point, according to Superintendent Jack Szabo, the district is basing its budget on last year’s tax rate figures since "that’s all they have." Recent revaluation of all township properties was completed raising the average assessed value from $169,000 to $450,000. The township has not yet certified these figures yet, but Township Business Adminstrator Mary Caffrey said the numbers should be finalized by June. Because of the revaluation, the numbers, including the new tax rate for the schools, are subject to change.
As of now, voters are being asked to approve a $28 million general fund tax levy, a 13 percent increase from last year’s $24.8 million levy. Last year, the tax rate was about $2.78 per $100 of assessed value with the average home assessed at $169,000. With a projected 34-cent increase to the school tax rate for next year, taxpayers would face a school tax increase of about $527.
However, Dr. Szabo said that when the new tax rate comes in he expects that the increase will be "much lower" than 34 cents per $100 in assessed valuation.
Voters will decide whether to approve the proposed school budget on April 17 when school elections are held.
School Business Administrator Bill Takacs said that even though the school board does not know what the new tax rate will be, it still wants to introduce the budget with a 34-cent increase because those are the numbers they have available.
"These are the semantics we’re working with," he said. "We’re not trying to be sneaky about it. We’re simply working the best we can with what we’ve been given. Hopefully we’ll have a new tax rate to recalculate into the budget before the election in April."
Driving next year’s budget is quite simply, Dr. Szabo said, enrollment increases. Last year, the district had 2,172 students. This year, that number has increased to 2,556 students.
The 2007-08 school year is slated to be the first year that Robbinsville High School will house seniors, which means the district has to prepare for its first high school graduation. It also means the district expects to hire a series of new instructors. The district is also looking to hire new teachers in the elementary school.
"Aid to districts, especially in Washington, has been quite controversial for last several years," Dr. Szabo said, referring to the lack of state aid the township receives for its schools. "What causes us particular difficulties in next year’s budget is the amount of state aid that we’re not receiving for our core curriculum. This has been one of the most difficult budgets I’ve ever had to come up with and it’s been difficult because people have been second guessing me at every line item."
On Feb. 28, the board filed a joint lawsuit with the Township Council against the state Department of Education and the state Education commissioner over the core-curriculum funding issue. The suit was filed electronically and outlined the district and council’s belief that the school funding formula is discriminatory and unfair. At this time, the board and council have not heard an update on the lawsuit other than that they have been given the go-ahead by the U.S. District Court in Trenton to issue a summons to the defendants.
Four additional residents Mark Bossie, Sharon DeVito, Jodi Stephens and Susan Morsell also signed off on the lawsuit because of their connections as taxpayers.
School board president Dave Pethybridge, who is running for reeelection to the school board on April 17, described the budget process this year as "ugly."
"I’m not going to make excuses or apologize, but it’s been ugly," he said at a "Meet the Candidates" forum last week. "We are now where we should have been in January and there’s a lot of things we could have done differently. Now we just want to move on and get a working budget in place."
Tom Halm, who is running for school board election this year, called this year’s budget process "ridiculous to the point of a comedy."
"It’s rather broken right now," he said. "We can’t treat the cap as a starting point, which is what the board appears to have done. Every year the administration should be charged with starting from scratch. Administrators from the schools should provide a budgetary report every month so the lines of communication between the board and the administration don’t break down like this again."
A public hearing for school budget was slated for Tuesday night, after The Messenger-Press went to print. An update on the public hearing will be available on the Web at www.messengerpress.com.

