MONROE — For weeks, residents have been asking members of the Monroe Township Board of Education about spending cuts and finding new sources of revenue in light of increased property taxes.
Candidates hoping to secure the public’s vote Nov. 6 faced the same concerns from residents during a forum Oct. 22 at the Oak Tree Elementary School.
The forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Oak Tree School PTA and the Renaissance at Monroe adult community, featured resident questions about the iPad initiative, the impact of increasing enrollment and state aid.
The underlying theme of each question was reducing spending and finding new, non-taxpayer sources of revenue. It was a theme each candidate embraced by and large.
Anthony Aversano, a senior internal affairs investigator with the state Department of Corrections and a Monroe Township High School (MTHS) class of ’85 graduate, said while increased aid from the state would be helpful, they can’t count on it.
“As far as spending goes, we have to make due with what we have,” he said, noting that he believes there are always places to cut in a budget. “There’s no magic wand that’s going to give us extra money. To me, that’s just doing responsible spending.”
Despite his support of reduced spending, he was against cuts from teachers salaries and called teachers the “backbone” of the district.
Marvin Braverman is the lone incumbent in the race seeking re-election, and has served on various boards of education for 35 years.
Braverman defended the board, while acknowledging that more work is needed.
“Between July 2010 and June 2012, we in the district had cost-saving initiatives that amount to almost $10 million, so we’re watching the budget,” Braverman said. “We’re not sitting on our rumps. We’re working on all these things that people have been talking about.”
He said he frequently voted against what he thought was wasteful spending in the past, and pointed out that the original high school project, budgeted at $85 million, ballooned to $135 million after public referendums failed.
Richard Gibbons, a lifelong township resident who owns and operates the Gibbons Rest Home in town, said he intends to apply his business experience to the school budget.
“We’ve grown this system so big that eventually it’s going to swallow us all whole,” Gibbons said. “We have people struggling to pay their taxes. So we have to seriously look at how we can decrease, and it doesn’t always mean just cutting programs or cutting sports, it means scaling back.
“I know in my business I’ve had to make some severe cuts in the last five years,” he added. “It was either that or lose the business.”
Brian R. Hackett, an ’06 graduate of MTHS and former Republican council candidate, emphasized that although he would seek spending reductions, he is still very much pro-education.
“Generally speaking, there is this idea that if you cut wasteful spending it means you’re against education or teaching,” Hackett said. “It’s not mutually exclusive. It’s not a zero-sum gain. Throwing massive amounts of money at a public policy issue doesn’t fix it. It’s how you spend it and what you do with it.”
Hackett, like a majority of the other candidates, additionally suggested that the iPad initiative should have been piloted prior to full implementation.
John D. Katerba, an MTHS ’84 grad, has worked for 26 years in the township utility authority, which is now the Monroe Township Utility Department.
He had a slightly different perspective, noting that much of the school budget costs are fixed, and said he was concerned about long-term enrollment.
“I know we all got hit with the splash of water with the tax bill. I’m looking forward to the tsunami,” Katerba said, noting that he wants the school board to be an approval agency with input on incoming developments. “We need to start thinking out of the box here.”
Kathy Leonard, while not an incumbent, previously served on the board and has spent her entire career in education, currently teaching special education in Newark.
Leonard said her goal on the board would be to establish a balance between fulfilling educational needs without burdening the taxpayers.
“There’s no simple solution. Every line item needs to be looked at,” Leonard said, citing vice principals as an example. “Those hard decisions have to be looked at, and have to be acted on.”
She said she took umbrage with a resident who derided extracurricular activities at a previous board meeting, and suggested that they, along with athletics, are the things that keep some students coming to school.
George Douglas Poye moved to Monroe in 1969 and has had three children graduate from MTHS, with four grandchildren currently attending township schools. He is a retired educator.
While Poye shared Leonard’s sentiment on balance, he was sure to note the board’s primary purpose of supporting education.
“For the past three years, I’ve looked at Monroe’s budget and the cost per student,” he said. “I have identified various categories of the budget where, in my opinion, they seem to be overspending [as compared to other districts.] At looking at their most recent budget … I have noticed they have begun to make cuts in some of those categories.”
Anthony Prezioso, who is running with Gibbons and Hackett, is a retired construction foreman whose two children attend school in the township.
Prezioso expressed concern that his family will be priced out of the community before his children can graduate and, like many of his fellow candidates, seeks cuts to reduce spending.
“We have to stop spending for stuff that we want and get stuff that we need,” Prezioso said. “We need to go line by line in the budget to see what we can cut. The storm is coming. Some day down the road we’re going to get it. We just need to be more responsible with the way we spend our money.”