Cut in tax hike saves average resident $38

BY SETH MANDEL
Staff Writer

MILLTOWN — The Borough Council and Board of Education agreed to cut $102,000 from the defeated school budget during a joint meeting last week.

The budget of just under $12 million, which residents voted down in April, would have raised the school tax rate 12 cents, bringing it to $2.28 per $100 of assessed valuation. The owner of a home assessed at the borough average of $165,631 would have paid almost $200 more in taxes.

The cuts will knock off 2.19 cents of the tax hike, meaning the school tax increase will now be $162 on the average home.

After the budget failed — by a vote of 613 to 538 — it was up to Mayor Gloria Bradford and the Borough Council to decide how much of the spending plan, if any, should be cut. The council can make recommendations as to where to apply those cuts as well, but the final decision is up to the Board of Education.

Interim Schools Superintendent James Sheerin said making cuts to a tight budget is a difficult process, but not one that must necessarily pit the two sides against each other.

“It was not a contemptuous meeting,” Sheerin said. “People were listening to each other on both sides of the aisle. I would say it was cordial.”

Bradford said the council went into executive session three times over the course of the 3 1./2-hour meeting to consider all the possibilities.

“The fact that we did that, to me, is a clear indicator that we were careful,” Bradford said. “So I was very pleased with the way it turned out.”

Council President Mike Skarzynski said the council sought to cut as much from the school tab as possible without having teachers fired or class sizes increased.

“We took every line item, item for item, what we could do and what we could cut without hurting the kids,” Skarzynski said. “I truly believe that any more money that we cut would have been detrimental to the children of Milltown. So what we [approved] were cuts that I don’t think are really going to hurt education at all.”

According to school Business Administrator Richard Guarini, one teacher’s aide, for grades one to three, was cut from the budget, saving the district $25,000.

The council recommended cutting funding for one full-time teacher, but, Sheerin said, that money was put back in the budget after the school board informed the council that it would instead remove that amount of money from the transportation portion of the budget.

“They wanted to take a teacher out, and they rescinded that and decided that they weren’t going to do that, because basically we told them if you do that, we’re not going to take the teacher, we’re going to take courtesy busing. And they didn’t want us to take courtesy busing, so they left the teacher in,” Sheerin said.

That money was allotted for the hiring of a first-grade teacher, Sheerin said, in order to address the increased enrollment in the district.

Last year, the district refrained from budgeting for an additional teacher and was left unprepared for an influx of first-grade students over the summer, he said.

“So in order to not get into a bind that way, we said, ‘Well, let’s put into the budget an additional teacher, and if we don’t need it then it’ll become tax relief for the following year,’ ” Sheerin said.

Also, the district was expecting to receive about $38,000 from the state for boiler improvements, but that money is no longer available.

“Because there’s a freeze of state moneys, we had to now come up with the money,” Sheerin said. “The town council’s position was borrow the money, and our position was, yes, but that then incurs additional costs for interest and for fees for borrowing the money. And we didn’t want to do it that way, but we realized that if we don’t need the money, then next year it will go for tax relief.”

Guarini said $15,000 was cut from the technology portion of the budget, Board of Education dues were cut by $10,000, and the salary of the as-yet-unfilled position of curriculum coordinator was cut $8,000.

An additional $6,000 was cut from central services and $38,000 was saved by eliminating the district’s increase to capital reserve, Guarini said.

Skarzynski has children in the school system, but is also the council liaison to the borough’s senior community, who he noted can least afford a tax increase.

“I just had to put away personal feelings and just look at it line item to line item and come up with what I thought was good for all the people of Milltown,” Skarzynski said. “I think we’ve accomplished that, and I think it should be the top priority of, not only the Board of Education, but local governments throughout the state to push the state to look for ways to fund education other than property taxes.”

Sheerin said neither the council nor the school board left the meeting feeling as though the situation was a loss or a victory, but that the education of the district’s students did not suffer greatly.

“Anytime you cut money out of a budget that’s a tight budget, there’s going to be pain,” Sheerin said. “But the pain was not as great as it could have been. I think the board recognized that the [Borough] Council felt they had to make some effort to bring taxes down.”

Bradford said council members had an obligation to be cautious with what officials considered to be a tight, responsible budget.

“The council upheld their responsibility of looking at the budget line by line, and I think that we made the cuts that would be the least disruptive to the children and their education,” Bradford said.