Voters send out budget message

Middletown and Hazlet school officials had a lot to cheer about when both school budgets were passed April 20. Voters rejected three out of five school budgets in the area.

The Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School budget failed by 678 votes, or by nearly 25 percent of the vote. The budget would have meant a tax increase of 28.4 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation for Aberdeen residents and 26 cents for Matawan homeowners. The increases appeared to be just too much for Matawan and Aberdeen residents.

The district Superintendent of Schools Bruce Quinn said he was disappointed in the budget’s defeat, and he blamed it on the high tax levy.

Voters also rejected, by more than 500 votes, a separate budget item of $900,000 that would have been used for extracurricular activities in the district.

Keyport’s 13.9-cent school budget increase was also defeated by almost 25 percent of the vote.

Board member Joanne Staeger, re-elected to a sixth three-year term, said the 7 percent voter turnout is not reflective of the number of people in the borough who care about the schools. She also partially blamed the budget’s defeat on the proposed 30-cent municipal tax increase this year.

Holmdel’s school budget was also voted down April 20. The $42.1 million budget called for a tax increase of 19.5 cents. The final vote was 1,085 to 988 against budget approval, after 18 per cent of registered voters went to the polls. Less than 5 percent of the vote defeated Holmdel’s budget. The 19.5-cent tax increase included 14 cents for referendum projects approved by voters in December 2001. Without the referendum money, the budget increase was 5.5 cents.

So, now the defeated budgets are passed on to the governing bodies of each municipality for review. The governing bodies are expected to make cuts to the budgets.

It has become painfully obvious that the burden of funding the school budget cannot fall solely on local taxes. With all of the educational mandates in school districts, it’s time for the state and federal governments to start funding the programs they demand districts provide. Local taxpayers would be more likely support school budgets if they were not expected to pay the majority of the bill for costly school programs set up and mandated by Department of Education officials at the state and federal levels who set policies, but don’t have to pay for them.