Bulk of township’s cuts disallowed; staff and program impacts unknown
MILLSTONE Residents can expect higher revised tax bills reflecting the state’s decision to restore $960,683 of the $1.26 million in cuts that the Township Committee made to the defeated school budget earlier this year.
Acting New Jersey Commissioner of Education Rochelle Hendricks notified the district and the township Sept. 17 that she had upheld only $303,925 of the Township Committee’s school budget cuts and she directed the school tax levy for the 2010-11 year be raised to $26.37 million.
Millstone CFO Annette Murphy said Tuesday that the $960,683 increase in the tax levy would add about 5 cents to the school tax rate. The tax increase will be about $250 for the average Millstone property assessed at $500,700, she said.
The state Department of Education’s decision means more than 75 percent of the cuts that the Township Committee made May 10, mostly to various salary line-items in the budget, were disallowed.
”Gov. Chris Christie’s administration has spent four months scouring this budget and in the end it’s been demonstrated that Board of Education was fiscally prudent after all,” Board of Education President Kevin McGovern said Monday.
Mr. McGovern said it was too soon to say what the decision means for specific programs and staff in the district, which had already implemented cuts in personnel, programs and transportation because it could not assume that its May 24 appeal to the education commissioner would succeed.
For example, there are 14.7 fewer teaching positions this year in the K-8 school district compared to last year, Business Administrator Bernie Biesiada said Tuesday. In addition, 30 bus drivers have already lost their jobs because the district voted last month to outsource most transportation routes to the Upper Freehold Regional School District in order to save approximately $300,000 a year.
”We’re happy with the result of the appeal, but the timing is problematic because we’ve already opened the schools,” Mr. McGovern said. “The appeal was filed in May, but the decision wasn’t made until September after school began. In the four months that have passed there have been changes already made.”
When residents defeated the April school budget by 280 votes, it was up to the Township Committee to review the 2010-11 school spending plan, which carried a $26,675,709 tax levy, a 5.4 percent increase from the prior year.
Township Committee members took issue with the fact that school district had signed a new three-year contract with the teachers union just days before state aid figures were released. Millstone’s state aid was cut 29 percent and the union refused to reopen and renegotiate its new contract, which provided 6 percent raises in the second year and 4.25 raises in the final year of the pact.
Much of the Township Committee’s $1.26 million in cuts were in salaries, which the district appealed on the grounds that it violated legally binding contracts with employees.
In deciding to restore most but not all of the salary cuts, the Department of Education said its review of “district salary worksheets” had found that in some cases more money than necessary was budgeted to cover employee salaries.
The Township Committee had also slashed $350,000 from the $9.24 million account used for tuition payments to the Upper Freehold Regional School District. Millstone students in grades 9-12 attend Allentown High School and the district has a tuition contract with the Upper Freehold Regional School District.
Acting Commissioner Hendricks ruled that the Township Committee could not reduce the tuition owed to UFRSD, but she only restored $325,277 of the $350,000 cut because a Department of Education review found an error that was made in calculating the tuition amounts owed to UFRSD from 2006 through 2009.
The state says UFRSD is owed $742,904 not the $767,627 that Millstone had originally budgeted, that’s why the $24,723 adjustment needed to be made.
It was not immediately clear before The Messenger-Press deadline when the revised tax bills would be mailed to residents. First the county must strike the new school tax rate once it receives the appropriate paperwork, according to Ms. Murphy.
Millstone Mayor Nancy Grbelja and Deputy Mayor Bob Kinsey, who are also members of the Township Committee, did not return phone messages before The Messenger-Press went to print Tuesday.