Greg Bean

Coda

Plea to ignore election

results is misguided

I can usually watch my local council meetings on the community's public access channel without suffering the fantods, but last week was a different story.

In my community, East Brunswick, we've faced school budget increases of nearly 30 cents per $100 in valuation every year for the last five years, and this year the proposed school budget for 2006-07 would raise those taxes by another 21 cents. That means the owner of a property assessed at $100,000 would pay $210 more in school taxes next year, and that doesn't count debt service or the 9 cent per $100 increase in the municipal budget.

Several weeks ago, I wrote that many people in East Brunswick and other communities across the state - seniors, blue-collar workers and those living on a fixed income, for example - have almost reached the breaking point. And soon, those people are going to have to start making some harsh choices. Taxes, or medicine? Taxes, or food? Taxes, or health insurance? Stay in the community they love but can no longer afford, or sell and move to somewhere more affordable - North Dakota for example?

Although the number of voters who turn out to vote on proposed school budgets is small, people feeling the pinch went to the polls this spring and defeated the proposed East Brunswick school budget by 2,297 to 2,133. That defeat put East Brunswick among the ranks of dozens of communities across the state where voters defeated school budgets and sent them to local governing bodies for recommendations regarding cuts.

It was during the public comment portion of the council meeting to consider budget-cutting recommendations that I tuned in and found a woman from a local parent-teacher organization making an argument I've heard before, but which was particularly grating this year.

It was this lady's contention that because the budget was defeated by such a small margin, it was not only the duty, but the moral obligation of the council to ignore the wishes of the voters and approve the budget as proposed. She used all the usual catch phrases in support of her argument. People move to the community because of the excellence of the schools. The fact that the budget was defeated doesn't mean anything, because most people would have supported it, if they had only turned out to vote. Members of the council, she scolded, are elected to make the tough choices, even if those choices ignore the will of the voters.

But nowhere in her argument was even a passing remark that recognized the sacrifices many in her community make to pay their current taxes, let alone the increases proposed for next year, and the increases that will certainly come every year after that.

It's that arrogance, that assumption that because we want decent educations for our children we somehow betray them or their futures if we demand our schools be more accountable for their expenditures - that we carefully scrutinize and discuss line item budgets to determine what's really important and what's not, that once in a while we simply say, "No, we can't afford it this year" - that gets under my skin.

If we really want to help our children and send them a good message, people like this lady from the PTO will join forces with those people who voted to defeat the proposed budget in demanding a constitutional convention to hammer out a more equitable method of funding education in this state.

The suggestion that the council has the moral obligation to override the will of the voters is the wrong message entirely. It suggests that one of the cornerstones of our democracy, the will of the electorate at the voting booth, is meaningless and can be ignored. That, in my opinion, is a horrible message.

Voters in East Brunswick, and many other communities across the state have spoken, and local officials must listen to their voices.

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I don't know how you feel about Gov. Jon Corzine, but I think we can all agree his administration is facing a huge crisis in the form of a $4 billion state budget gap that must be closed by July 1.

And because Long Branch, one of New Jersey's 31 Abbott school districts, is served by a Greater Media Newspaper, the Atlanticville, I've watched with great interest his request to the state Supreme Court that state financing for those districts be frozen next year on the theory that every little bit helps.

The governor and Attorney General Zulima V. Farber personally went to the Supreme Court last week when that case was argued, and they made sense. Noting some of the exorbitant financial requests made by some of the Abbott districts, Farber argued that we just can't afford to increase Abbott funding until the state solves its fiscal dilemma.

But after the hearing, according to The New York Times, James E. Harris, president of the New Jersey chapter of the NAACP, took Corzine to task, invoking the school desegregation battles of the 1960s.

"It feels right now like Jon Corzine is standing in the schoolhouse door of our Abbott districts," Harris told the Times.

That, in my opinion, was a shameful comment, a shameful comparison. To liken Jon Corzine, a man whose record on issues of race is admirable, to a hate-monger like former Gov. George Wallace of Alabama is unfair, incendiary, irresponsible and borderline reprehensible.

We're all in the same leaky boat here, Mr. Harris, so let's start acting like it.

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With all this talk of tax hikes, I was pleased to learn that for the second year in a row, citizens of Manalapan can look forward to a tax decrease next year. The proposed municipal budget would reduce the tax rate from 47.4 to 47.37 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, meaning that the owner of a home assessed at $300,000 will pay about a buck less in taxes. That's right, a whole buck!

I don't know what folks in Manalapan will do with all that extra money, but I hear McDonald's is anticipating a rush on items from the dollar menu. Fries and sodas are extra.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. He can be reached at gbean@gmnews.com.