Why pay Lorenzetti?
To the editor:
In the interest of promoting fair and honest debate on the extraordinary issues surrounding this year’s budget preparations, I think it’s important for our community to clearly understand the board’s decision to pay its former superintendent, Nick Lorenzetti, while also paying Judy Ferguson, our acting superintendent.
As the board stated at the time of his resignation, Mr. Lorenzetti indicated a personal need to be absent from his duties for an extended and unspecified period of time. Concerned that Mr. Lorenzetti’s absence would result in a long-term void in leadership that would delay progress in several important areas, we reached a mutually acceptable separation agreement. By doing so, the board is now able to employ a superintendent. The board granted Mr. Lorenzetti a paid leave of absence through June, most of which was time earned or time he was entitled to by contract and/or policy.
To ensure that the district had appropriate leadership without diverting the attention of other administrators from important responsibilities and initiatives, the Board of Education decided to hire an acting superintendent. Dr. Ferguson was appointed within 45 days of Mr. Lorenzetti’s announced departure. Under her leadership, and until a permanent replacement is found, we will continue our progress with our strategic plan and our referendum projects and finalize a particularly challenging budget for the 2005-2006 school year.
While the cost of the acting superintendent will result in an additional $40,000 in expenditures this fiscal year, because Dr. Ferguson is part-time and is paid on a per diem basis without benefits, there is likely to be a savings in the 2005-2006 superintendent salary account until a new superintendent is hired. The board has sufficient funds in the current budget to fund this expense and felt it was necessary given the challenges we face.
We hope the above information is helpful in providing the public with information regarding the transition plan selected by the Board of Education. I also wish to assure the public that we acted in what we felt was in the best interests of our students, our faculty, and our community.
Bill Hills, president, Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education
Being prudent is way to go
To the editor:
No amount of property tax reform will change the basic dilemma facing the Hopewell Valley school district for the next few years:
1. The Hopewell Valley is collectively affluent enough to pay the entire school budget ourselves. Any money we get from the state or federal government is coming from our state and federal taxes. Indeed, we must assume that we are collectively a net exporter of taxes, because our money will help support districts that are too poor to pay their own way.
2. By law, the school district budget cannot grow more than around 3-5 percent per year.
3. Several of the largest line items in our budget are growing at 10 percent per year or more: health insurance and energy. The district’s ability to control these costs is limited.
In other words, the costs of health insurance and energy are growing (and are likely to continue growing) twice as fast as the budget cap, and we will get no real help from the state or federal government. There is no way out of this dilemma in the next few years; our only hope is to be more prudent than other districts and so be in a better position when the collective manure finally hits the fan.
One prudent choice would be to charge students fees for certain nonessential services. Many districts nationwide have started charging students around $100/year for parking it might gain us only $10,000, but that’s still money. Many districts are also starting to charge "pay to play" fees for athletics, with aid for students who cannot afford the $100-200 fee.
It might be worthwhile for the district to consult with other schools in the Colonial Valley Conference, about whether we could all ratchet back the time (and thus money) spent on each sport. Most student athletes spend 10-20 hours per week on their sport in season, far more time than they spend on any curricular subject. Surely we could work with the rest of the CVC to curb the tendency for sports to fill all the time available, making them less expensive, less physically stressful, and (I predict) more fun. In the long run, the only other choice is going to be dropping some sports altogether, as the pressure on the school budget inevitably grows.
Mary Ellen Curtin, Hopewell Township
‘Preventative balance is the key’
To the editor:
What a painful process Hopewell Township is going through! It is in the midst of physically paying the price for years of short-sighted fiscal and land-use planning. The lessons and practice of preventative medicine have not been applied and now the taxpayers, employees and students of this township will pay the price.
Like a slow growing disease the symptoms are now evident to all of us. Now the taxpayers of Hopewell Township will be bled by the high cost of treating those symptoms. In knee-jerk reaction we turn to putting salve on the wound by wielding the ax on important human resources who have dedicated their careers and volunteer time to this community. We start cutting away at the already limited municipal services that we receive per tax dollar spent. We turn to our educational programs and instructors and start cutting away at the one community benefit that gave us some personal justification for paying the exorbitant real estate taxes we do.
Why do we treat the symptoms and not try and cure, or better yet, prevent the disease? Why do we continually find ourselves in this fiscal predicament? Why are we continually allowing ourselves to be put in this position? Shame on us for being so short-sighted. The math is not rocket science and the sources of municipal income are not all that variable. The lion’s share of the money comes from one source-the taxing of real property, both commercial and residential.
The duty of the municipal government is to balance its expenditures with the known given tax base and to seek additional income through the federal, state and county grants. Throughout the process a long-term plan of balanced township growth must be managed and encouraged to allow for the inevitable rising costs of services. The latter long-range plan is the failure of this municipality and this government. Only through the encouragement of business growth, new construction and clean ratable residential and commercial development can the municipal budget balance without continually going deeper in to the residents’ pocketbooks.
Instead we have promoted a policy of fighting with both residential and commercial developers regardless of the ratable impact. We continue to acquire open land with tax dollars and remove from the tax rolls our only opportunities to promote new ratables. We continue to invite lawsuits and reduce the zoning on the only viable resource that we have available to us to offset our costs, buildable vacant land. And along with the loss of future opportunity for tax balance, in mounting these battles we push ourselves further and further into debt.
At the same time that the papers were headlining the layoffs and school budgetary problems, the potential open space acquisition of the St. Michael’s property was being heralded. The St. Michael’s property has the capacity to house over 190 senior residents while adding no additional school children and providing over $2,500,000 annually of tax benefit. Why do we ignore this opportunity?
On the commercial side rather than reducing zoning and fighting a Merrill Lynch, we should be looking for ways to encourage their expansion to our ultimate benefit. Can anyone tell me what negative has come out of the Merrill Lynch complex? Is Scotch Road filled with traffic and our quality of life truly compromised to the extent that we should have battled with them this last time, or the first time for that matter? Where do you think our current municipal shortfall would be without Merrill?
The blame does not just lie with our government. The residents of this township have a mutual responsibility to balance their ideological goals with the reality of their communities’ fiscal limitations. We are all to blame as we continue to support the status quo and encourage our local government to continue on this path. We can’t have our cake and eat it to. We all love the rural nature of this community but to preserve that nature at all costs is not reasonable. Preventative balance is the key. Rainy days come and go. Let’s start to save for them by conducting the business of our government as a business with accountability to the long-range financial needs of this community rather than catering to the short-term ideological goals of a few.
Mark Ellenbogen, Hopewell Township
