Officials disappointed by school budget defeat
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
Brick Township Council members will begin chipping away at the narrowly defeated school budget probably some time next week, council President Joseph Sangiovanni said.

Council members received full copies of the budget over the weekend, Sangiovanni said.

"I'm waiting for everyone to get a chance to go through it, so they can get as many questions together as they can, so we can have that ahead of the meting," he said Monday.

Voters turned down the $90,940,744 tax levy portion of the $136,528,176 budget, which would have raised the school tax rate by 4.2 cents for each $100 of assessed valuation.

The vote was 2,336 "no" votes to 2,288 "yes" votes, according to the Ocean County Clerk's Office.

"We really didn't think it was going to fail this year," Board of Education President Daniel Woska said. "I think we are pretty much at bare bones. We didn't have any new programs this year. It's going to be tough to find the money they are looking for. I'm hoping the council is happy with the budget and says 'We're not going to take anything.' "

Sangiovanni, who is also the school district's transportation supervisor, said he was very surprised the budget went down.

"Everyone I talked to and all the meetings I've been to, seemed very positive," he said. "The budget was a maintenance budget, and I think everybody felt that way."

Both Sangiovanni and Woska said the fact that the three seats on the Board of Education were uncontested could have contributed to the low voter turnout.

"People that would ordinarily get out and vote didn't get out," Sangiovanni said. "Unfortunately, those are the people who would have made a difference." The top vote getter in the uncontested race for the three, threeyear seats on the board was incumbent, Kim V. Terebush, who received 2,853 votes. Robert J. Collier was second, with 2,757 votes, and newcomer Len Cuppari was third with 2,737 votes.

District officials, including Superintendent Walter J. Hrycenko, gave numerous budget presentations to the public in the weeks up to the election, Woska said.

"We really thought it was a good budget," he said. "We really expected it to pass."

Woska said he was disappointed more parents hadn't turned out to support the budget.

"We have 10,000 and change students," he said. "Figure 1.5 parents for each student. We should have had 16,000 parents come out and vote."

Taxpayers with a home assessed at the township average of $134,700 would have paid an additional $56 annually in school taxes if the budget had been approved.

State aid remained flat from the previous year at $39,822,744, school officials said.

Anything and everything we can do to speed this thing up we are going to try and do," Sangiovanni said. "The board gave us a very lean budget. We haven't had that small a tax increase in probably six or seven years. I really thought they trimmed what they could."

School Business Administrator James Edwards had termed the budget "fiscally conservative."

The district found savings through efficiencies in the transportation department; proactive banking, which led to high-yield interest earnings; and reductions in utility and telephone costs, Edwards has said.