JACKSON – The state has an unfair school funding formula and it is wrong – that is how Board of Education members described their vote to reject pursuing a state incentive program.
Board Vice President Megan Gardella summed it up saying, “Jackson has been taxed in a lot of ways monetarily. We had 9.9% tax increase last year. Our community was taxed through reconsolidation and reconfiguration and in that time, I don’t personally feel the state has come forward.”
School districts by law usually can’t raise taxes beyond 2%. However, the new Tax Levy Incentive Aid program allows them to go beyond that, and will give districts a 5% boost to adjustment aid if they do.
That program would have allowed the Board to increase their proposed budget and allow them to seek more in school taxes. The board voted against that.
Gardella noted that the resolution to decline the spending limit, “said they were going to help us with our expenses that are out of control and are state mandates then maybe we could say okay, we’ll meet you somewhere on that but it’s not written that way.”
“It’s basically to say we’ll bring you up to adequacy. Guess what, we could raise our taxes up to that and we have expenses that aren’t going to maintain us. I think that’s the missing piece here and for some reason there is a lot of legislators around and there is only one or two who are paying attention to that fact,” she added.
“All our tax dollars are paying for their salaries including everybody who is auditing all our financials for the past two years. We’re all paying for that service,” Gardella said. “Here we are talking about the same thing. We can raise our taxes. I just want someone to pay attention to us. I didn’t know you could only go as high as your adequacy number. I would have said 300% because this idea of raising taxes is nonsense.”
She supported the Board’s refusal to raise the tax levy through a resolution declining the state program.
Board member Michael Walsh agreed. “Adequacy. I’ve seen the numbers and they make no sense,” he remarked. “They use the evaluation of the average salary but they use years 2022-23 and 24. They also multiply it in there by the value of your homes but they use 2020-21 and 22.”
“There’s no match. I don’t know where the state is coming up with this adequacy? I think somebody should look at how they formulated this,” he added.
Board member Erica Osmond said that when she heard about this potential tax increase “I thought it was bananas and I lost my mind.” She said she was glad the board agreed to decline this. “In my opinion we couldn’t accept the proposed tax levy/incentive program.”
Osmond added, “we must reject any tax increase that is higher than the tentative budget that the community already expects from us. Our jobs as Board members having been voted in by our community is to protect Jackson citizens and defend our rights to make local decisions without state interference.”
She noted the idea of another increase following last year’s 9.9% increase “that the state called a one-time deal is unacceptable and yes I get that this is a new round of taxes but this breaks the public’s trust and it goes against responsible local control.”
“The (2% cap) was created to stop school board members, regular people like ourselves from putting too much of a tax burden on the community. It’s a safety measure against financial irresponsibility,” Osmond explained. “It gives the taxpayers some sense of stability. Our current problem is that the state simply doesn’t share the money fairly that we do contribute.” She called the incentive program a temporary fix and a false promise that should be rejected.
Board member Allison Barocas said that in 2010 a 2% tax cap was signed into law and in 2018 the S2 state aid funding formula was signed into law, “that would cut your school funding and then add into that the variable of increasing non-public transportation, increasing multiple language learners, increasing special education and add to that inflation and then get to add adequacy. Riddle me that?”
Board President Tina Kas said she remembered the governor and commissioner of education “boasting that all school districts were fully funded. I don’t know how we are here now because Lacey, Toms River, Asbury Park, Middletown, us… if everyone was fully funded why would they need to raise their taxes to bring themselves to adequacy?
“We have a rising non-public population, we have a rising ML (multi-language) population, we have a rising special needs population. Those populations cause substantial state mandated budget expenses. When your non-public expenses supersede your public funding, you’re never going to make it to adequacy. You’re going to keep falling behind.”
Kas said, “we could raise your taxes, hurt your pocket book but you’d be back here. It doesn’t matter because all those expenses are going to keep increasing and we’re going to be in the same place, we’re never going to get ahead.”
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