A funny thing happened when they finished counting the votes in the April 27 school budget elections — most of the budgets passed. And that is almost unheard of in New Jersey, where voting down the proposed school budget every year is a better sign of spring than the arrival of the first red-breasted robin.
For years, sticking it to the school budget was one of the few ways voters in this overtaxed state could express direct displeasure with their financial lot, although few believed it would do much good. But this year was different. This year, more budgets across our coverage area passed than failed.
Voters in the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District, for example, approved the $77.2 million school budget by 1,633 to 1,097. In Freehold Township, it was 1,671 to 1,173. Voters in the Freehold Regional High School District approved a whopping $177.6 million spending plan by an equally whopping margin — 9,989 to 6,966.
In the Middlesex County coverage area for Greater Media Newspapers, where most of the school budgets across the county passed (except for Spotswood and Monroe), many of the margins in favor were similar.
In Edison, it was a close call with only 15 percent of registered voters turning out, but the 3,808 to 3,585 vote was still impressive, considering the fact that voters in that community had rejected the budget in all but one of the past 11 years. In East Brunswick, the budget passed 2,559 to 2,085; in Old Bridge 1,986 to 1,462; in Sayreville it was another close call at 1,423 to 1,407; North Brunswick, 1,602 to 972; South Amboy, 272 to 261; Jamesburg, 234 to 179, and Metuchen 1,118 to 533 (a huge victory in terms of percentage in favor). So what happened? In the after-election coverage, many administrators and local politicians credited better efforts to explain the budget beforehand and energetic get-out-the-vote drives as keys to success. And I think that’s probably true. But it seems to me that the outcomes are also testament to the fact that voters are smarter than people on the other side often give them credit for, and they’re not just a bunch of hard-hearted tightwads, either.
I remember writing a column a few years ago after the school budget in East Brunswick was defeated, and several people in the educational community were urging the Township Council to ignore the will of the voters and approve the budget as proposed. Their rationale was that the voters must not have understood what they were voting against — all the money in the budget and the big tax increase was for “the children,” after all — or they wouldn’t have turned it down. So ignoring their vote would actually be doing them a favor by protecting them against themselves.
I was outraged by that argument, and thankfully, the council didn’t buy it. But the attitude that voters didn’t really care about the community’s children if they refused to pay every dime requested was common. On the other side, lots of voters believed the school districts were bloated, arrogant spendthrifts that needed whopping upside the head at every opportunity to keep them from running completely amok.
In the last few years, however, those same voters have seen the districts faced with horrible financial prospects, and making draconian cuts as a result. In my home community of East Brunswick, for example, which faced a $10 million cut last year and suffered painful cuts to staff and programs, I think voters this year realized the cuts they’d been asking for all along had finally been made, and it was time to pull back before real harm was done.
I don’t think the changing voter sentiment was unique to East Brunswick, and that might bode well for the future of education in our communities.
Aftermy column last week about the possible sale of the dilapidated and abandoned
McGinness School in
East Brunswick, I heard from Jeff Simon, a former councilman, who reminded me he had proposed selling, or leasing, the school 10 years ago. At that time, other members of the council shot down his idea, and that’s too bad. But Simon also was nearly prophetic in his concerns about the Golden Triangle development plans and Playhouse 22. Nobody likes to hear “I told you so,” but I suspect there are lots of voters in East Brunswick who wish they’d been listening more closely.
As soon as the government announced they’d killed Osama bin Laden, you just knew the weirdness would start almost immediately, and it did. Within hours, the “birther” contingent, who finally realized their issue didn’t have legs, was loudly carping that the administration could have captured or killed the terrorist long ago, but waited until now when President Obama needed a boost in the polls. My favorite critics, however, were the Native American “spokesmen” who were outraged by the operation’s code word “Geronimo” used by U.S. commandos to report that they had killed Osama in his safe house. (The actual code name for bin Laden was “Jackpot.”)
“It’s insulting and hurtful,” Vernon Petago, amember of the JicarillaApache Tribe in New Mexico, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “What were they thinking? They applied a respected Apache leader’s name to the most despicable terrorist in the world.” The next day, Harlyn Geronimo, a great-grandson of the chief, demanded that the president or his administration apologize for the insult.
I agree. How could they (or all the people who yelled “Geronimo!” for some reason when they jumped out of planes in World War II) have been so crass? I guess, as my pal Dave Simpson noted, we’re gonna have to include political correctness in Navy SEAL training from now on, along with more practical instruction in areas like precision marksmanship and explosive demolition. Maybe we could throw in ballroom dancing for good measure.
Personally, I think that in the future they ought to yell “Wolfe Tone!” or “Michael Collins!” instead of “Geronimo!” Those might offend a fewIrish, but they’re used to it by now. Then again, there are other Irish (like me) who would be more than pleased. It would be better than all those jokes about us being drunks.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.