By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer
LITTLE SILVER — After a fitful start, the Board of Education adopted a budget for the 2003-2004 school year of $9,394,669, with a tax levy of $7,524,755.
The budget is up $536,037 over the 2002-2003 budget of $8,858,632, and the tax levy is up $599,037 over the levy of $6,925,718 for the current year.
The tax rate for the current school year is $1.256 per $100 of assessed valuation, based on assessments for 2002. The town has underwent a revaluation for 2003 and new tax rates will be in effect for the new budget.
Under the 2002 assessments, the value of a tax point, or one penny of property tax, in the borough was $63,791. Using that figure, the increase in the tax rate for the school district would be 9.4 cents for a school purposes tax rate of $1.35 per $100 of assessed valuation under the 2002 assessments.
Susan Irons, the school board’s business administrator, said the day after the budget was passed, March 27, that the new tax rate, based on the new assessments for 2003, would be 70.1 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
Regardless of which rate is used, borough taxpayers are being asked for about 7.5 percent more in property taxes to support the schools for the coming year.
According to Borough Administrator Michael D. Biehl in 2002 the valuation of properties in town was $637,910,769; the valuation in 2003, after the revaluation, is $1,218,719,540, an increase of just over 91 percent.
The budget will be submitted to the voters in the April 15 school board elections.
Neither Irons nor anyone else on the board would release a figure on the tax rate until the day after the public hearing had been held and the budget was passed March 27.
On March 13, a small delegation from the school board, including President Douglas Glassmacher and School Superintendent Marjorie Heller, planned to meet with the Borough Council at its workshop meeting to discuss the school budget, but when they found a reporter in attendance, they said they wouldn’t proceed.
Biehl said it was a publicly noticed meeting which had been advertised in the newspaper and was open to anyone.
Mayor Suzanne S. Castleman then said the council didn’t want to hear anything that the reporter couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have a discussion about the budget if school officials objected to the reporter staying.
School officials opted not to have a discussion of the budget and instead only reported on the bids received on the additions and renovations planned for the district’s two schools — Markham Place and Point Road.
In a meeting that later took place at the board office Irons said the tax rate was 4.91 cents. When told that couldn’t be possible — that it might be the increase in the tax rate, but it was unlikely that it was the tax rate — she insisted that was the tax rate.
When asked what the tax rate would be during the public portion of the Board of Education meeting at which the budget was adopted, Glassmacher immediately closed the public portion, called a recess, and referred the question to Irons and Mandy Galante, a board member.
Neither Irons nor Galante knew what the tax rate.
"We’ve never made a practice of finding out what the number is," Galante said. "No one has asked for it before."
Irons said at that time that 4.91 cents was the increase in the tax rate, rather than the actual rate, and she would try to get the number on the rate from borough officials the next day.
When asked the next day, Biehl said the school tax rate for 2002 was $1.256, which translates to an equivalent of 65.74 cents in 2003, based on the new assessments.
Using Irons’ figure of 4.91 cents as the increase in the school tax rate, Biehl said the tax rate for 2003 should be approximately 70.65 cents per $100 of valuation.
Irons called the same day to report a figure of 70.1 cents for the tax rate, and gave the tax rate for the current year as $1.256.