5/25/05

On May 17th 2005 the Council met to decide on the school budget. First the Financial Over sight Committee (FOC) consisting of Mayor Levine, Deputy Mayor McKenzie, Councilwoman Danile, the Township Manager and the Township Accountant gave a report. Councilman Regan did not participate because his wife is a teacher. Because there was disagreement within the FOC the presentation was very brief and defaulted to the inquires totaling $1.8M that they made to Board of Education (BOE).

It should be noted that TUF initially implied that the FOC recommended a cut of $1.8M. As pointed out by Mr. McKenzie that was not correct. The FOC was not unanimous in its opinion and therefore there was no final recommendation. The inquires are just that inquires. Two points in our defense, 1) we were given the information with little other information and were left to make assumptions, 2) even Ms. Danile, at the May 17th meeting referred to the report as a recommendation.

The BOE responded by more or less addressing each item of the inquires stating that all were inappropriate. Most notable was the Capital Outlay reduction of $800,000 which, according to the BOE was not legal because there was a state specified required minimum. All on the council seemed to accept the argument pertaining to the Capital Outlay.

Next the public was allowed to speak. We estimate that about 50-60 people spoke. Clearly less than 10 spoke in favor of cuts. The overwhelming majority spoke in favor of leaving the budget increase intact. Many of the people spoke eloquently with the main point being if you cut the budget it will mean extra curricular activities will be cut. It should be noted that none of the inquires made by the FOC were directed at extra curricular activities.

A definition is appropriate at this time. The BOE asked for a $13M increase. If all of the inquires presented by the FOC to the BOE were accepted then the budget increase would be cut by $1.8M to $11.2M. So when we talk of cuts below we are talking of a cut to the proposed budget or the proposed budget increase not to the prior budget. We are not trying to SPIN the word cut we just want to make clear what we mean.

The Council then discussed the budget and voted. The way this was done by accepting motions and voting on them. The first motion was by Ms. Danile to cut the budget by $1.2M, it failed. The second motion was by Mr. McKenzie and it was to cut nothing, it failed. The last motion was by Ms. Ashley-Williams and it was to cut the budget by $1.2M, it passed.

What seem strange to us was that Council appeared to pick arbitrary round numbers in the range between zero and the legal maximum of the inquires made by the FOC. We offer as evidence that that was the way they did it as follows. The council has to list the specific line items to cut so when they decided that the next vote was going to be on the sum of $500,000 they looked through the list to come up with the items that when added together would equal that amount. We found this a very strange way to do it. We believe that they should have taken each item separately and voted if that item should be cut, not cut or partially cut. In all however most members tried to be fair.

There was of course some partisan wrestling. After Mr. McKenzie announced to the largely pro-budget crowd that he favored a $0 cut he repeatedly prodded Mr. Levine to give his opinion, knowing that Mr. Levine believed the budget was too high. Mr. Levine declined to answer immediately stating that it is his costume as Mayor to go last. Watch it yourself on FTTV-25 and come to your own conclusion but we felt that both came off poorly. Mr. McKenzie clearly wanted Mr. Levine to talk about cuts in front of the pro-budget audience. Mr. Levine gave the appearance of ducking the issue, when he did finally speak we don't really get a strong sense of his point of view.

How individuals voted is listed below.

	Deduction	A-W	Sumter	Eberle	Levine	McKenzie	Danile	Ritchie
1)	$1.2M	N	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N
2)	$0	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N	N
3)	$0.5M	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	N

To give some context to it we will give our opinion on why member voted the way they did. We have not special mind reading power so that these as our opinions. First Ms. Ritchie. It might seem strange that she voted No all three times but she appeared to be unhappy that the FOC did not give a clear recommendation. Mr. Sumter wanted a large cut (large as in $1M or so). We think he voted No on the third vote so that he could make a motion for more than $500K. Mr. McKenzie, Ms A-W and Ms. Eberle wanted no cut but were willing to compromise on a cut of $500K. Mr. Levine and Ms. Danile were in favor of larger cuts.

Finally the BOE had the right to appeal the reduction, we learned last night that the BOE has accepted the $500K cut.

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