Upcoming School Board Elections

I write this piece with some reluctance.  If Aberdeen residents won’t protect themselves from their elected leadership, why should I?

Last February, two-thirds of the Matawan-Aberdeen School Board voted to strip residents of their right to vote on the school budget and nobody showed up to protest.

Last July, the school board voted to approve a Memorandum of Agreement with the teacher's union regarding the terms of a new teachers contract and nobody asked to see the memorandum. No residents, no reporters, nobody. Nobody but me, that is, and I no longer live in Aberdeen. At first glance, it's a good deal for the district with 7.5% increases over a four-year period and the lion's share of increases going to new teachers. I'll comment further once I see the signed contract.

Nor did anyone complain when the school board voted to increase spending by $1.64 million during a sustained period of high unemployment. Or when the school business administrator comment he could have cut $200,000 from the budget but preferred to spend that money rather than allow the residents to keep it.

While on the school board, I worked hard to implement new goals, such as how to objectively measure progress. Now that I'm gone, so are those measurements. No longer do we report where our graduates go or how likely they are to complete any post-high school education. No longer do we compare ourselves to high-achieving districts.

Still, I have many dear friends in Aberdeen and I continue to hope someone will step forward to lead.

Regarding the upcoming school elections, it's sometimes hard to determine who will better serve the community but it's relatively easy to look at a candidate's experience and determine if he was part of the solution or part of the problem.

This year, Aberdeen is fortunate to have more candidates than available seats -
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The Patch Interview

My thanks and appreciation to Chelsea Naso of the Matawan-Aberdeen Patch for her yeoman’s work and, on this occasion, for interviewing Mayor Fred Tagliarini and Town Manager Holly Reycraft. I happen to like Mayor Tagliarini and Ms. Reycraft. They’re both good people trying to do right by their community. However, I’m also opposed to many of the town council’s actions and feel compelled to respond to some of their answers.

Below are parts of the interview with my comments:

Q: In January 2009, the town council introduced a Pay-to-Play ordinance. Then the council never discussed or approved it. What happened and why won't the town council end the practice of awarding contracts to their largest campaign contributors? The most egregious example is the township engineer, CME, who contributes tens of thousands of dollars to the political campaigns and receives over a million dollars a year from the township. When was the last time the township had competitive bidding for a professional services contract? 

Fred: To the best of my knowledge, all candidates of all parties follow the guidelines set forth. 

Holly: We have a pay to play ordinance that is the same as the state requires. They [CME] get appointed each year. I appoint the engineer, based on recommendations from the council. They [CME] are mostly paid through escrow funds. Everything goes out to bid as per law. We don’t pick them based on their contributions. If you keep changing firms, there’s no continuity. 

Fred: A lot of engineering firms will contribute to both campaigns. Engineering firms donate, businesses donate. I don’t know an engineering firm that doesn’t make donations. I know engineering firms that will contribute to both campaigns.

The township does not request nor receive competing bids for “professional services” such as engineering, town planning, legal, or accounting. Engineering alone (CME) receives over a million dollars a year from the township. 

Furthermore, these professional service providers donated tens of thousands of dollars to the democratic town council’s campaigns and it’s been well documented on this blog using public records.
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Back-to-School Bashing

Here are some of the latest school factoids you may have missed while reading the local news. The school board has approved a $1.5 million budget increase for the upcoming year. Sadly, Superintendent Healy neglects to mention how even a dime of that extra money will be spent or why last year’s $61.8 million budget wasn’t enough.

 Normally, you’d be able to review the district’s “User Friendly” budget to view the line item increases but a funny thing happened along the way. According to last year’s budget (and the superintendent’s budget presentation), the 2011-12 budget was $61.8 million. However, according to the 2012-13 budget, last year’s $61.8 million ballooned into $64.1 million.
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Now, What?

Aberdeener.com began nearly 5 years ago in the fall of 2007. The site’s purpose was to raise awareness of local issues and present ideas for improving the community.

Shortly after the site’s launch, I became convinced the core problem was leadership and targeted all of Aberdeen’s elected leadership. 4 years later, every one of Aberdeen’s elected representatives on the school board and town council resigned their positions.

During my short stint on the school board, we cut the prior year’s budget by $2.3 million and introduced several educational initiatives, including a renewed emphasis on writing skills, a revised special education program, investments in technology, and a push to reduce grade inflation.

In the nearly two years I’ve been gone, school spending has increased 6.2% ($3.7 million) and education is once again adrift.

As for the township, we’ve been blessed with competent leadership in the new town manager, Holly Reycraft, but the council itself is still mired in pay-to-play. Anchor Glass, Aberdeen Forge, Train Station, Pool Club, Senior Housing have all been torpedoed by the council and its gang of experts who seek to extort every penny they can get from the developers.

Which brings us back to the blog.

Now, what? Nobody has stepped forward to assume the blogger role. Nor has anyone done the gritty investigative work of requesting documents from the municipal bodies.

Once again, we’re being asked to trust our government without any ability to verify.

What is the municipal budget? Why have more school employees not been outsourced, like transportation, secretarial, and child study teams? How much money is being paid to big political donors like CME? Where are our children going after they complete high school?

As a school board member, I continued to submit OPRA requests and never allowed the administration to be the sole arbiter of the school agenda. After high school, where do our graduates go? What’s the correlation between class grades and state exams? How are we progressing compared to other districts? Why are expenditures outpacing inflation and population growth? Has teacher training been cost effective? How are the academies raising student performance?

Getting the raw data is relatively easy. I’d be willing to submit the OPRA requests via email and pay for the documents but someone needs to retrieve and fax them to me. Until then, the blog will focus upon small initiatives and hopefully someone will take the initiative to lead.  

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Aberdeen, the Township of Money Pit

Since the good people of Aberdeen have supported their monolithic democratic town council for over a decade, I have to assume to following will be welcome news.

Although the town budget hasn’t been posted yet, the township has announced good news; municipal property taxes will be going upabout 5% this year. That’s more than triple the rate increase from the school district. Once again, the township has successfully increased its share of the property tax pie.

More good news. The township continues to invest in senior housing with another $360,000 for CME to do more “environmental remediation” at the old South River Metals site. Don’t know if we’ll ever actually have senior housing but it won’t be for lack of spending money on CME. Perhaps it would be cheaper for the town to reincorporate as a wholly owned subsidiary of CME.

Too bad Aberdeen’s bond rating dropped. (Hat tip: AberdeenNJlife). Moody says the downgrade resulted from Aberdeen’s “weakened financial position following fund balance draws in each of the last seven years.” Makes you wonder if they’ve been reading the blog. Well, no problem. We can just raise more taxes.

On a final note, it’s nice to see the township recognize our old public defender, John Fiorino Jr; the council just voted to by his daddy’s property for $130,000.

Aberdeen. Such a nice town. If only it didn’t cost so darn much.

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