Millstone to gauge margins, turnout

By: Cara Latham
   MILLSTONE — The school district’s defeated $30.3 million budget, and the three additional spending questions that were also rejected by voters will be heading to the Township Committee for review on May 2.
   The meeting, which begins at 8 p.m. in municipal hall, will be a joint meeting of the township’s Board of Education and the Township Committee.
   Voters defeated the district’s school budget by a vote of 883-795 last week.
   Under state law, the Township Committee must now either approve the budget as it is, or reduce the tax levy. If the committee opts to lower the tax levy, and the school district doesn’t want to make spending cuts, it can appeal the municipality’s decision to the state education commissioner.
   The defeated budget carried a $24.8 million tax levy and a tax rate of $1.98 per $100 of assessed value. The owner of an average assessed house in Millstone at $397,331, would have seen a school tax of about $7,867 if the budget had passed on April 17.
   Voters also rejected three additional ballot questions that proposed spending that day: an additional $400,000 for a full-day kindergarten program; an additional $69,781 for an applied technology teacher; and an additional $78,700 for new language arts books.
   If these three ballot questions were approved, the proposed $1.98 tax rate would have increased by 3.85 cents to $2.0185 per $100.
   Superintendent Mary Ann Donahue said Monday school officials "were extremely disappointed that the general budget was not approved."
   "Prior to going to the voters, we had to cut over $2 million from the budget. We’re at a point now where we feel we cannot lose any other programs or staff."
   When the budget goes before the Township Committee on May 2, she said, school officials will also appeal to the committee to approve the funding for the three separate ballot proposals as well.
   Committeeman Elias Abilheira said Monday that the Township Committee will have to look at two things — how strong the split between voters was for each question and in the budget vote. They also have to look at how big the overall turnout was, he added.
   According to the township clerk’s office, 1,675 of the township’s 6,428 registered voters, about 26 percent, went to the polls on April 17.
   Some residents had reached out to the Township Committee, he said, adding that some said they felt they didn’t have all the information on the budget and that they didn’t think it was as financially tight as it could have been.
   Mr. Abilheira noted that the full-day kindergarten question was "defeated by a very large margin," making it difficult to reinstate funding for it. Voters turned it down the full-day kindergarten question by a vote of 562 to 1,105.
   "When you look at a margin of defeat like that, it’s difficult" to reinstate it, he added.
   "All the other questions are very close, especially with the main budget," Mr. Abilheira said. "We know that the Board of Education and administration did a very long drawn-out job (on the budget), which includes opening a new school. I don’t think there’s any usefulness in making a token cut for the sake of saying it was cut."
   He said he’s not inclined to slash the main budget "unless we really find areas were we can cut" without hurting the education of the students.
   "A large part of that budget is opening (the new middle school)," he said. "It has to open."
   Mr. Abilheira said he expects the Township Committee will make a decision at the May 2 meeting.