Special regular meeting was business as usual
Turns out there was more than $534,000 in available cost savings. At last night's special regular meeting of the Teaneck Township Council, Township Manager Helene Fall presented a list of other non-essential expenditures that could have resulted in a total reduction of $1.1 million to the rejected school budget. Good news for taxpayers? Not really. All it meant was that a different set of budget reductions could be swapped in instead of those line items previously designated for removal. No resolution to trim the budget more significantly in light of these new revelations was considered.
In the final analysis, what is irksome about this process is not really the scope of the budget reductions. The problems with Teaneck's bloated educational budgets are structural and are unlikely to be resolved through a Council review of a single year's expenditures.
It is the lack of commitment shown by the Council to finding creative ways to protect residents from escalating tax bills that is so galling. At one point during yesterday's meeting, Councilman Paul Ostrow observed that the $400k+ allocated to playground improvements was not strictly necessary. This line item was nonetheless restored to the budget in full despite indications last week that it would be dropped. Why was there no enthusiasm for staggering the upgrades over time or finding some other creative way to economize? Council members were simply going through the motions.
The headline that will come out of this meeting will likely read "Freshman Sports Saved," and most Teaneck residents will applaud that. I am pleased that a program that meant so much to its participants was spared the ax. It doesn't really cost that much anyway. But the real takeaway for Teaneck residents is that all rhetoric aside, this Council has no appetite for making hard fiscal decisions.
Postscript- The Bergen Record covers the topic in Thursday, May 18th's edition. The playground improvements will indeed be carried out over a period of time rather than all at once.
posted by Teaneck Blog @ 10:56 AM
15 Comments:
the real takeaway for Teaneck residents is that all rhetoric aside, this Council has no appetite for making hard fiscal decisions.
And the last council election showed that this was a good path to follow if you wanted to get reelected. The voters clearly don't want to hear about cuts -- anywhere.
I'm going to say something frank that I may reget....
Living in Teaneck is like watching a slow train wreck. The resentment is already a mile deep on all sides and it will only deepen as the orthodox community gains more political clout.
I fail to see how resentment or any religious division comes into play here.
The only slow train wreck I can see approaching is a narrow tax base being forced to support more and more spending. It's completely unsustainable. Teaneck's seniors are already struggling to keep up with the escalating tax burden, and newer homeowners who paid much higher prices for their homes do not have the liquidity to absorb more tax hikes.
You're in denial if you think that this problem will be solved with a bit of belt tightening.
I don't think this is simply an issue of the Orthodox vs everyone else (though I personally do believe there's a great deal of resentment in the Orthodox community towards the public schools -- much of it unjustified). The problem is that the town as a whole shows no evidence that it can get the budget under control. The numbers are increasing faster than the rate of inflation, I think, and when you ask them (Council or the BOE) what they are planning to do about you get a blank stare right back.
When I asked winning candidates Katz, Feit and Gussman (didn't have a change to collar Rudolph) and asked them about controlling spending, they looked at me like I was from Mars. All they could talk about was "responsible development" and "sharing services", both vague, meaningless terms.
Now it may be that the Orthodox community ONLY wants to cut the school budget -- I have no idea. Certainly that is what many non-Orthodox believe, and they may be right, but not being Orthodox myself, I don't know what gets said privately over the dinner table.
I do believe that there is room to cut on both sides, school and town. We cannot have everything. Since I moved to Teaneck in 1990 (in large measure for it's diversity) my taxes have gone up about 70-80%. I realize that a chunk of that is from a reduction in state aid. But if over the next 10 years my taxes go up at anything approaching that rate it may force me out, and I don't want to leave.
You're in denial if you think that this problem will be solved with a bit of belt tightening.
Who thinks that? I certainly do not. But I know that any solution to Teaneck's problems that does not involve some degree of belt tightening is no solution at all.
As for this supposedly deep division between Orthodox Jews and the rest of Teaneck, I think it is overrated. I doubt the Orthodox Jewish community cares as much about the school budget as is commonly believed. They clearly have not been turning out to vote against it (and I don't think they did this year- this year's vote was during the Passover holiday and probably attracted even fewer Orthodox Jews than usual).
If you really want to break all the taboos, the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is the class division in Teaneck. A consequence of the wonderful socioeconomic diversity that we all enjoy is that Teaneck is one part Alpine and one part Hackensack.
Alpine residents don't want or need a lot of government services. As a result, their taxes are extremely low. You can imagine how they would feel if they were asked to subsidize comprehensive municipal services for a large population of renters or owners of lower end properties who were paying far less into the system yet benefitting from it far more.
In any case, I don't really see this as relevant either. I'm not a sociologist, just a concerned citizen.
As it stands now, Teaneck residents from all backgrounds are facing mounting tax bills at the same time that their disposable income is being depleted by high gasoline prices and their largest asset, their home, has stopped appreciating rapidly. If this were a temporary condition, most would take it in stride. But it isn't. If this were just one of the drawbacks of living in Bergen County, most would brush it off. But it isn't. There is a Teaneck-specific problem and the residents are entitled to seek relief from it.
I’m very concerned about pervasive perceptions that the school system is somehow "failing". There is a need for a rational, rather than a hysterical discussion about the challenges facing Teaneck’s school system.
For example, it does a tremendous disservice to the school system to link spending to test scores as in "We pay more than Ridgewood, why don't we get the same results?" We're all intelligent enough to understand that children are not interchangeable widgets, that each school system is unique and Teaneck system is more diverse in many ways than most systems in the state.
The fact is that the best hope for containing costs is to attract more children of upper income families to the system. I'm very satisfied with the quality of the education my children are getting, but my voice is lost in a cacophony of criticism and doubts expressed by people who people who don't send their children to public school, who never set foot in any of the schools and whose entire knowledge about the system is based on information downloaded from the internet.
The fact is that the best hope for containing costs is to attract more children of upper income families to the system.
I am intrigued by this statement. Could you please elaborate on this point? It seems to me that adding more students to the existing infrastructure would only cause strain and require further investment in facilities and personnel to accomodate the influx.
Some kids cost more to educate than others. Kids from affluent, English-speaking households full of books and stimulating conversation are a bargain. Kids from economically disadvantaged households and kids from non-English speaking households require interventions, particularly if a system is under pressure to meet the No Child Left Behind (unfunded) mandate which says that children from every racial and ethnic group must improve in lock step. Give its diversity, Teaneck has an extraordinarily high NCLB hurdle.
If the system added more students who required less intervention, the net effect would be a lower cost per pupil.
The problem is the system is losing low-intervention students in a large part due to unfounded fear and false perceptions about the quality of the system as a whole. The reality of the school system is fine. What we need to do is improve perceptions. It would benefit everyone in the community.
If the system added more students who required less intervention, the net effect would be a lower cost per pupil.
There's still something I am missing here.
What you have outlined might lower the cost per pupil, but it would result in a higher total cost. This would still result in higher overall expenditures and higher taxes, unless the low touch students would somehow crowd out the high cost students from the system.
I don't understand why everyone brings up the Orthodox. Are my Non-Orthodox taxes not worth lowering? The blogmaster is correct when he focuses on class. I detect a certain whiff of stereotype when everyone assumes the Orthodox are all wealthy and that only the Orthodox are wealthy. It has nothing to do with where one worships. I also don't have a child in public school and I am being soaked by property taxes over $30,000 per annum! Can you believe that?
To 'middleclassgal'
$30,000 in property taxes alone and you're middle class?
I think I better start applying for food stamps.
How much is a house with a 30K tax bite worth?
At current assessment rates, probably assessed at over $750,000.
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