In the days preceding the BOE election Chip Hoever and Phillip Kramer met with the BOE. We spent approximately one hour discussing the referendum for the stadium and a half hour discussing the budget. We then posted on the web our recommendations to vote for the referendum and against the budget. At around the same time the BOE sent information to the public, and we (TUF) mailed 500 fliers to homes in the active senior communities (about 50 were returned as "Wrong Address"). If you look at the election returns district by district you will see that the district that we mailed to had the highest percentage and number of NO votes. Since the NOs exceeded the YESs by only 53 votes TUF concluded that our mailing and email tipped the balance. Of course only an exit poll would be able to tell for sure.

TUF is neither ashamed nor proud of what we did; we did it because we thought we had to do it. Just to be clear TUF recommend a NO vote on the budget for two related reasons. First, the BOE misrepresented the effect that the budget would have on taxes, stating that the average property tax would increase by $286. We estimated the actual increase to be over $525/year (after a little tutorial from Township Manager Kenneth Daly on the right way to do the calculation we found that the actual increase was approximately $545/year.) The second reason was that noting that misrepresentation, the complexity of a $116M budget and that most voters are not trained in how to access the budget, TUF believed that an outside review of the budget was in order. To quote us,

Note we did not say that the budget amount was too high, merely it was high enough that an outside assessment was warranted.

When the budget failed it went to the Township Council who in turn asked the Financial Oversight Committee (FOC) consisting of Mayor Levine, Deputy Mayor McKenzie and Council person Danile (Council person Regan did not participate because his wife is a teacher) along with the help of the Township Manager and the Township Accountant to present recommendations to the Council. The final report will be presented on Tuesday, May 17th. At this writing the current state of the recommendations is that the FOC sent an inquiry to the BOE asking about specific line items to adjust. The BOE then replied to each. Being told that dissemination of the response was at the discretion of the FOC, TUF requested a copy of the response at the May 10th township meeting. Feeling stonewalled, TUF requested a copy of the it citing the Open Public Records Act (OPRA, New Jersey's version of the Freedom of Information Act). The Township Clerk's replied in an email:

We do not fault the Clerk but in our opinion a non-confidential inquiry and response generated by a committee and an outside group like the BOE and presented to the council in their meeting packets to aid them in a decision should be subject to the OPRA. We then learned that members of the Council are allowed to disseminate such information and sent the following to all Council members (except Mr. Sumter who does not have email) on May 12th at 11:10 PM.

As of the time of this writing (May 14th 7:00 PM) only one council member has replied, caring enough about open government to provided me with the document.

We received three documents with little explanation and the following is therefore only our interpretation. The first document is a spreadsheet-like list of the line item inquiries by the FOC for adjustments. The second is a line-by-line response from the BOE to each item in the first. The third contains supporting information.

• All of the information in the first document is contained in the second so we have not bothered to reproduce it here. There is one exception however, the first document contains the (correct) cash total of the line items as $1,835,108.00. The second document contains the sum of $1,913,000.75 - we don't know why.
• Not surprisingly the BOE response in the second document is that all of the money in the original budget is necessary. In the spirit of fairness, there are only two possible answers that they should give 1) Our original calculation was correct (which is what they did) or 2) Oops thanks for pointing out our mistake.
• We assume that the supporting document was provided by the BOE to justify some of the costs questioned by the FOC.

TUF does not have the expertise to take this any further. We recommend that the Council follow the adjustments to the budget suggested by the inquiries of the FOC and reduce the proposed increase of the school budget by $1.8M. Put another way TUF is in favor of the school budget as "amended" by the FOC.

Would we have liked it if the costs were lower? Yes. Do we disagree with the current environment of laws, mandates, union lobbying power, misinformation and taxing methods? Yes. Do we suspect that more could be taken out of the budget? Yes. Do we know where it can be cut? No, we do not have the expertise thus we do not believe that we can realistically demand more reductions.

Common arguments in either direction are "Taxes are too high" and "The kids need the money". If you think the budget should be even lower and can justify your claim, please tell us, but merely saying something like "we need fewer teachers" doesn't help. If you have supporting documentation then we, or better you, can make that argument at the council meeting.

Similarly if you think the budget should remain intact please justify why. Merely saying "The kids need it" doesn't suffice. This is essentially the reply given by the BOE but "independent" examination suggests otherwise. Please give us documentation based on other experiences.

TUF asked for an assessment, the Financial Oversight Committee is providing it. Let's hope the Council will abide to it.

In closing we'll take from the letter that TUF sent to the Home News Tribune:

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