Irony

The bitter argument over whether the Council should have authorized $10,000 to pay for an audit of the school budget has taken an ironic turn. As it turns out, the Record reports, paying the audit firm the fee they earned for producing the controversial report would be a violation of Teaneck's pay-to-play ordinance.

Though small in magnitude, this expense was among the most controversial and headline grabbing outlays of the past few years, and support or opposition to it came to define candidates standing for election to the Council this year. Later on, the report proved a useful tool in the Council's deliberations over its recommended adjustments to the defeated school budget and was referenced repeatedly even by its detractors. 

Yet throughout the entire period during which the report was in the spotlight, nobody in a position of importance seemed aware of the technicality that might have mooted the whole issue. It's somewhat amusing and also somewhat alarming.

Athens and Teaneck

The streets of Teaneck have been a lot calmer than the public squares of Greece over the last few weeks, but we too could be in for an austerity plan imposed from the outside.  

"New Jersey does not have a tax problem, that we don't have enough tax revenue," Governor Christie says. "We have a spending and size of government problem." Accordingly, a key component of the Governor's plan to fix New Jersey's fiscal mess is legislation that would cap the rate of government revenue growth on the local level and act to slow the growth of spending. The Governor will be in our area today to discuss a plan to limit total property tax increases to 2.5 percent per annum.

In Teaneck's case, this would mean that annual increases in tax rate would be significantly lower going forward than they have been in the past. In fact, Teaneck taxpayers have regularly swallowed increases of 4% or more in recent years. Had the proposed cap been in effect since 1997, Teaneck property tax bills would have grown approximately 34.5% over the past 13 years. In actuality, those bills have ballooned by approximately 66%, based on data presented by Alan Sohn here (and subsequent increases).

 

This would force a massive reconsideration of priorities as both the Township and the school board would be prevented from turning to the taxpayers to make up the difference every time their costs rose (at least past a certain point). The passage of Governor Christie's plans would force local governments to take some hard decisions on the spending side that would most definitely lead to the loss of some cherished services and drastic reductions in others. 

But at this point, is the status quo any better? Neither the Teaneck BoE nor the Council has shown a great degree of aptitude for limiting the growth of the homeowner tax burden despite the increasing strain this has placed upon residents as the economic picture has darkened. Starving the beast that might otherwise consume us may be our best option for keeping our communities affordable for years to come. Teaneck taxpayers may be more inclined to dance in the streets than to riot in them.

Council speaks loudly

Don't confuse the form of the Council's recommendations on the defeated school budget with their substance. The Council's suggestions to the Board of Education took the form of a resolution passed by a narrow 4-3 vote that identified $6.1 million worth of savings through a combination of headcount reductions (especially in the administration and support staff) and reduced spending on supplies like textbooks. The substance of the Council's message to the BoE was clear. Taxpayers must not be compelled to bear the brunt of the sharp decrease in state aid to local school districts.

While the final number approved by the Council majority was deemed too high by Deputy Mayor Parker and Council members Honis and Toffler, none of them pushed hard for recommending only modest cuts in expenditures for the coming school year. As Council members from across the spectrum repeatedly voiced their frustration at a process that forced them to make difficult and very specific choices with incomplete information and what they claimed was little to no assistance from the BoE leadership, it became clear during last night's marathon session that the Council intended to throw down the gauntlet before the BoE. Council members repeatedly reminded themselves and their audience that the line items they were trimming were only suggestions and that the BoE itself would be charged with the task of apportioning the overall sum authorized to the areas of greatest need, doing "more with less."

In a dramatic and somewhat surprising statement, Council member Toffler revealed what it appears the Council was really intending to convey to the BoE by weighing such significant cuts to the school budget. Professing a belief in "shared sacrifice" under difficult circumstances, Toffler suggested (no doubt with the wholehearted agreement of at least four of her Council colleagues) that the BoE ought to seek concessions from the teachers' union that would ease the pain of the state aid reduction, presumably to include a salary freeze and employee contributions toward health benefits.

Attention now turns to the BoE, where Dr. Ardie Walser et al have limited room for maneuver. The BoE is hemmed in on one side by an electorate that has voted against a signficant increase in the school tax levy, a Council that has reaffirmed that vote and recommended freezing spending at the previous year's levels, and a new administration in Trenton that is fiercely fighting to slow the growth in the homeowner tax burden. On the other side is a binding contract with teachers that locks in a significant pay hike. In the middle is a large school system with a host of complex needs and wants.

If it is truly committed to protecting the interest of students, and indeed of the many public employees who are not tenured faculty whose livelihoods hang in the balance, the BoE will now turn to the teachers' union and seek to come to an arrangement. It might also, as Council member Toffler hoped, seize the opportunity to increase sharing of services with the municipality, and perhaps even revisit an idea unreasonably discarded by the Council in its deliberations: user fees. However, neither of those areas has the same potential for vast savings and preservation of existing programs and services as the suspension of salary increases, an idea whose time has most certainly come.

Pay to play is a good thing

There is no potential school budget reduction that isn't controversial in some quarters. But among the many possible savings the Council weighed as it prepared to make its recommendations on the defeated school budget is one that should enjoy broad support. This would not involve taking a painful decision to cut something that in better times one would quickly restore. The imposition of extracurricular activity fees is the right thing to do under all conditions. It is a simple matter of fairness to all students and respect for the taxpayers. Distressingly, this has already been nixed.

Teaneck would not be breaking new ground in taking such a step. Other area districts have reluctantly imposed fees for participation in school sponsored extra-curricular activities as a result of the pressure on school budgets due to the soft economy and the steep reduction in state aid to local districts. This has generally been accompanied by great regret, wailing and gnashing of teeth. In our town, speakers at some of the public meetings following the school budget defeat preemptively warned the Council against considering such a measure, describing the importance of extra-curricular activities, especially inter-scholastic sports, in their lives and asking officials not to recommend any decrease in the taxpayer subsidy for these programs.

While poignant, these pleas should have gone unheeded. One can affirm the importance of school-sponsored extra-curricular activities to the development of character and improvement of our students without concluding that these activities should be paid for by all taxpayers. There is nothing odious about asking those individuals who benefit from a particular extra-curricular program to shoulder the financial burden of paying for it. Unlike academic programs, these activities carry no participation requirements; on the contrary, many students who would like to participate are excluded. Is there a compelling reason other than existing precedent as to why we compel Teaneck taxpayers to foot the bill for exclusive teams that serve only a small subset of Teaneck's youth?

The litany of reasons typically cited for why a robust program of school-sponsored extra-curricular activities is valuable and worthwhile is not a bit diminished by asking our students or their parents to contribute to the cost of sustaining them. Yes, studies seem to show that student-athletes are significantly less likely to abuse drugs and that student-athletes on average carry higher grade point averages than students who are less engaged in extra-curriculars. There is, however, no evidence that this edge evaporates when students or their parents contribute to the cost of running the interscholastic sports program.

Some have a legitimate concern that the introduction of activity fees will limit participation to those who can afford to pay for it. This is hardly an argument that nobody should have to pay to play. Some smaller sum could be left in the budget to cover financial aid for needy students, and of course Teaneck's many teams, clubs, theater troupes and the like would be more than welcome to supplement the funds they contributed themselves toward to the support of their chosen activities through fundraising drives (as many already do).


Strangely, this option has been taken off the table before others that might actually have implications for the quality of instruction in our schools or the health and general welfare of the students. Someone should answer for why that is.

Fixing Teaneck's flawed campaigns

Voters and candidates alike routinely express dismay at the level of discourse in local campaigns. Despite preemptive measures designed to curb the excessive negative campaigning that characterized past elections in Teaneck, this year's Council race has proven no exception.

As residents field last minute robocalls and prepare to go to the polls, the atmosphere has again turned toxic, perhaps most noticeably in the furor surrounding candidate Joseph Steinberg and his loud detractors. Regardless of who wins or loses Council seats this year, the electoral combat will have reopened old wounds and inflicted new ones, not only upon the candidates and a handful of involved residents, but upon Teaneck's already dysfunctional political culture.

Of course we know by now that another spiteful season of electioneering will draw to a close and we'll collectively lick our wounds while our municipal leaders return to the more mundane task of governing. Still one cannot help but wonder if we in Teaneck are doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly. The costs can be high. It seems that each successive campaign diminishes social cohesion, and there is little doubt that the tenor of our local politics dissuades many qualified individuals from volunteering or continuing to volunteer their time and talents. Perhaps equally damaging is that in the aftermath of these bitter struggles, we are left with a factionalized Council. It may not be divided along party lines, but it is just as sharply divided as any partisan municipality's governing body.

This would be far less unhealthy than it is if candidates for office were pursuing a vigorous but contentious debate on the pressing issues facing our town. But they are not. This campaign, like many of its predecessors, has been more about the company the various candidates keep or what interest group they identify with than it has been about what the candidates actually want to do once elected. While expressing near unanimous support for tax stabilization, better labor relations and disclosing no actual plans to help us get there, the candidates and their advocates have kept us focused on other questions over the past several weeks, including:

-Is Steinberg a pawn of controversial Council member Barbara Ley Toffler?

-Do Elie Katz, Adam Gussen and Yitz Stern have significant ties to disgraced political boss Joe Ferriero?

-Are Helen Schlereth and Robert O'Neill running to represent residents or public employees?

In a similar vein, Joseph Steinberg has repeatedly reminded the voters that he has a child in the public schools and Gayle Helfgott has written a cryptic (and vaguely offensive, if I understand it correctly) letter to the Suburbanite seeking to dispel the preconceived notions one might have about her communal affiliations based on certain assumptions one might make about her. To the untrained eye, these claims seem basically irrelevant in establishing one's credentials for office, but in today's Teaneck, these oblique references are key to defining one's candidacy and identifying as a suitable candidate for a particular demographic.

Naturally, we the voters have adopted some common techniques to cut through the fog. We spend several weeks every other spring studying whose lawn signs are found together in each neighborhood's lawns, parsing candidate letters to the Suburbanite in search of certain code words and catchphrases, and then devising complex voting strategies for our favored candidates that we urge upon our friends and neighbors.

It's less important to assign blame for this political farce and its harmful side effects than it is to find a way to avoid repeating it. Future candidates for public office should not forswear negative campaigning, but affirmatively promise to tackle real issues and offer substantive policy prescriptions in the course of the campaign. This year, Yitz Stern assures us he has a "real plan" to limit future tax increases, but offers no details as to what it is. Joseph Steinberg claims to possess a strong record on fiscal issues and superior business acumen, but tells us nothing about what he hopes to do as our Councilman. Even the one "issue" discussed by the candidates, i.e. the $10,000 Council approved audit of the defeated school budget is not a real issue but a red herring, another little hint as to who the candidates are and with whom they symbolically stand. When voters are left to guess about what a candidate will actually do once elected, it is not surprising that the campaign period turns into an exercise in labeling.

Voters and the media have a responsibility to enforce this discipline upon the candidates if they will not do it themselves. Candidate forums can be a great venue in which to do this, but their reach is limited to those who can and do attend, and in any case this year they disappointed. The blogosphere is well positioned to take up the slack, but is also subject to hijacking by those with an ax to grind. So, after a long hiatus, I have come back to lend a hand. Welcome back to Teaneck Blog.