School Officials Demand Taxpayer Money Returned

Cranford's Board of Education urged Gov. Chris Christie to suspend the 2010 school budget elections and demanded that he return the $179,767 taken from the district's surplus to Cranford taxpayers.

Education officials feared rumors of additional cuts and a 2.5 percent property tax cap at Monday night's regular meeting. They passed two resolutions advising Christie to rethink his budget strategy.

The governor will propose slashed state aid funding for New Jersey school districts on Tuesday.

"We play by the rules," said Robert Carfagno, BOE business administrator. "We were under the 2 percent (maximum allowed for accumulated fund reserve) that we needed to be and so now we lose that money. We just want to see if the state can find another way to fund instead of taking it from us."

The resolution says that the proposed cut "unfairly targets the Cranford Public School District" for taking that which resulted from "sound financial practices." Such reserves are set aside in case a need arises. They will need to be replenished in the following years, taking further resources from the classrooms.

It goes on to question whether Christie's excutive order will have a negative impact on property taxpayers.

"We want it back," said BOE member Michael Caulfield. "He's taken our taxpayer dollars allegedly to lower property taxes but then only to have us raise property taxes."

Cranford's current school budget is based on the same amount of state aid received as last year, as well as last year's 4 percent property tax cap. School officials may decide to raise taxes to fill in for missing state aid. But if the governor caps taxes at 2.5 percent, even more budget adjustments will need to be made.

The cuts to Cranford are significantly less than what most New Jersey school districts are facing. The state is factoring in the amount of excess surplus school districts have and reducing their state aid in many cases by at least that much.

Districts like the one in South Orange-Maplewood, for instance, will suffer a more than $2.2 million reduction in state aid.

The Cranford district was slated to receive a remaining $1,108,409 in state aid for the rest of the fiscal year before the Christie cuts. The total state aid for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, was to be $3,212,458.

BOE officials also asked Christie to suspend the 2010 school budget elections to allow time for adjusting the budget to fit the new restrictions.

Christie's annual budget message was postponed to March 16. School districts must finalize their proposed budgets by April 3. School budget referendums are then scheduled to be addressed on April 20. And everything must be reviewed by the county.

"Another rumor was maybe they'd move the elections a month away," said Carfagno. "If he lowers the cap to 2.5 percent, maybe he'll throw something in there to change the elections."

The Board of Education will hold a special meeting on March 22 at Lincoln School to approve the 2010-2011 preliminary budget for submission to the Executive County Superintendent of Schools. A public hearing will be held on the budget at Walnut Avenue School on March 29. Both meetings will start at 7 p.m.

Check Cranford Patch tomorrow for the latest on Christie's announcement and Cranford's reaction.