The purpose of this page is to check statements made by candidates against the facts.
4/1/06 - On the web page of Nancy LaCorte we found the statement "This BOE has consistently refused to have an outside auditor examine its books." This is not true. The open public records act (OPRA) requires such documentation to be open to the public. To receive the information contact John Calavano at 732-873-2400 ext 308. TUF has no doubt that he will readily provide it. TUF informed Ms. LaCorte of this inaccuracy on 3/31/06. In addition the state auditors readily check the BOEs books. According to Mr. Calavano the most recent audit found no mistakes.
Because this is a TUF issue we will comment further. TUF has repeatedly asked the BOE to commission an outside independent review of its budget. To this they have flatly refused. Only BOE member Mr. Michael Kanerak (not running in this election) has been open to this idea.
In fairness to Ms. LaCorte, Phillip Kramer of TUF has presented his ideas on an operational review to the BOE for months yet at the March 30th meeting he had to, once again, explain the difference between it and audit to BOE member Mr. Gordon (not running).
On 4/9/06 we noticed the error was corrected
4/9/06 - Mr. Hernandez twice and Mr. Bonanno once have stated that the 2005-2006 budget included money for an alternative program (dropping the euphemism, this is a program to pull disruptive children out of the main stream to help them develop and to protect other students). This has of course became very popular after the recent fight in the high school. They claim that the voters and then the Township Council cut this out of the budget.
We strongly disagree, the voters turned down the budget and the Council cut spending by ½ Million but the BOE chose to cut the alternative program. I know that when I have a spending limit and I'm over budget I cut out what I believe is least important. Apparently the BOE, including Mr. Bonanno, Mr. Web and Mr. Hernandez decided that the alternative program was the least important part of the budget.
Their comments attempt to blame the public for the BOE's lack of foresight and priorities. Their including it as a second question in this election also indicates to us that they still do not think it important enough to include in the regular budget. If not that then they are playing politics by putting a popular issue outside of the budget to enable then to exceed their spending cap"
