Officials work together on school budget review

BY SETH MANDEL
Staff Writer

MILLTOWN — Borough officials are preparing to take action on a 2005-06 school budget that was narrowly defeated at the polls April 19.

The $12 million spending plan, as proposed by the Board of Education, carries an increase in the school tax rate of 12 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

The budget is now in the hands of Mayor Gloria Bradford and the Borough Council, which will make a decision to either pass the budget as is or make cuts. The council has until May 19 to make that decision.

Council President Mike Skarzynski said borough officials have to maintain a difficult balance between giving residents a tax break, where possible, and making sure all the appropriate educational programs are fully funded.

Skarzynski noted that he has two children in the Milltown schools, and he is also liaison to the senior citizen community, which tends to struggle with property taxes each year.

“So, really, it’s a tough decision to go through the budget, and you’ve really got to tell yourself, and I’ve come to the conclusion, that you have to put your personal feelings aside and really examine the budget and do what you think is right for all the people in Milltown,” Skarzynski said.

Interim Schools Superintendent James Sheerin said Board of Education members will work with the council during the budget review.

“Our job is to give them as much information as they need in doing their job of reviewing our process, and then have meetings set up that would be appropriate in order for them to fulfill their responsibilities,” Sheerin said.

Bradford said the process is a cooperative one, not one in which the council and school board are pitted against each other.

“Then nobody wins,” Bradford said. “So we’re just going to sit down together with them and let it evolve.”

Sheerin said that if the council recommends specific budget cuts, the school board must abide by the dollar figure represented by those cuts, but the line items that would have to be removed would be under the purview of the school board.

“The board can select other line items that they feel are more appropriate, even though their position right now, and our position, is that we presented a very lean, responsible budget that had a lot of creative things, and cost-effective things, that were built into it,” Sheerin said.

The only areas of the budget that are somewhat off limits to the council are areas that fall under the state’s Thorough and Efficient (T&E) education laws. Those guidelines regulate a minimum baseline of education that must be offered to every student in the state.

The state would oversee any changes that would be made to those areas.

“Any T&E items automatically then would be appealed or go to the commissioner to be reviewed,” Sheerin said. “And the town council has to have a rationale for why they cut in those areas.”

For example, Sheerin said, if physical education time was affected by a cut, it would be appealed and most likely overturned at the state level.

“It goes to the county first, but then it becomes the commissioner’s responsibility to either restore that amount or concur with the town council,” Sheerin said, adding that he doesn’t expect such a situation to arise.

“What we’re hoping for is that the process will not come down to that,” he said. “And that it will be a process that they’ll take a look at the budget, they’ll say it is a responsible budget, and if there are going to be cuts, that they will be minimal.”

Bradford said the school board has a difficult task each year presenting a budget to the voting public, and was impressed by the painstaking method by which the budget was constructed.

“I truly believe that our budget was put together carefully,” Bradford said. “I just want what’s best for the taxpayers without hurting the children, and I think we all want the same thing.”