HILLSBOROUGH: School budget to debut Monday

Spending plan will balance educational needs versus tax relief

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
    Flush with more money than usual, school officials will meet this weekend to finish crafting a 2012-13 budget that will try to walk a tight line: spending more while giving some significant tax relief.
    The budget likely will hire people, buy equipment and spend on programs to improve education while trying to give back some money to soften property taxes.
    The state’s budget season has arrived a bit early this year, and the state’s county superintendent wants to see a preliminary budget by Tuesday, March 6. That prompted the board to schedule a special meeting Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the Auten Road Intermediate School cafetorium to introduce its spending plan for the next school year.
    Last year the budget was $110 million with about $77.4 million to be raised in taxes.
    The budget-making starts with optimism. Hillsborough learned last week it will receive 7 percent more — a increase of $1.7 million to bring this year’s total to $24.9 million. Plus, it has some of the $1 million in unspent aid the state sent its way last summer after the present year’s budget was struck.
    It will become an exercise in balancing. On one side will be high-priority unbudgeted items like more teachers to reduce class size, fixing facilities, performing deferred maintenance and professional staff development.
    On the tax viewpoint, state law says a tax rate hike cannot be more than 2 percent. Some board members want to see it stay much lower — perhaps half that? — to give property owners a break in tough times.
    Member Greg Gillette, chairman of the Operations Committee, said Monday that he defined “tax relief” as any amount below budget figured at the maximum 2-percent tax increase.
    The board based long-term contracts based on a 2-percent increase, “and any time we come down from that, it’s tax relief,” he said.
    In February, the board passed up an opportunity to bypass the need to take the budget tax levy to an April election. The board voted to continue to give the voters the chance to pass on the budget, at least for this year, and skipped the chance to have the state approve the budget as long as it stayed under the tax cap.
    One sizeable item in the budget will be technology, and the board decided to delay a week a four-year lease purchase commitment to buy about 750 touch-screen tablet-type laptop portable computers (at about $1,000 apiece) for teachers, plus related software and equipment.
    If the board accepts the low bidder, it will spend about $1.4 million over four years. There would be a first payment of $315,954 payable April 28, followed by four equal payments starting in April 2013.
    Dennis Balodis, the board’s financial advisor on the project, said the low bid could be held until April 1, but warned risking what he said was an astoundingly low interest rate of 1.46 percent.
    He likened the rate, which came from J.P. Morgan, to swimmer Michael Phelps breaking a world record. He said it was likely due to the credit worthiness of the township and the competition of eight bidders.
    Board Vice President Marc Rosenberg said one mitigating factor is the purchase of the new technology will eliminate the need to buy replacements for obsolete desktop computers around the district. Joel Handler, the district technology director, estimated that amount was perhaps $800,000.
    Superintendent Jorden Schiff said the increase in state aid was a recognition suburban districts needed tax relief, he said, and Hillsborough spent less than the state average to educate a child. He admitted he didn’t completely understand how the state made the calculation of aid.
    Gov. Christie has proposed the largest single-year state expenditure for schools in New Jersey history and has utilized a more accurate method of counting districts’ children. The changes in state aid, which offsets the burden on local property taxpayers, will deliver $100.8 million to the 16th District — $7.8 million more than the current year.