Voters will head to the polls this week to select trustees for the Secaucus Board of Education and weigh in on the proposed $32 million budget for the 2011-2012 school year, a spending plan that includes a tax increase.
There are six candidates vying for three slots on the board of trustees, including Lisa Snedeker, Joseph Lewis, Mark Gutmann, Jules Carricarte, and incumbents Eleanore Reinl and Dora Marra, whose terms end next month.
Michael Makarski, whose term also ends in May, is the only incumbent who is not running for reelection this year.
The three winners elected to the school board will serve three-year terms. The trustees elected will be on the board when the contract of current Schools Superintendent Cynthia Randina expires in 2013. This means the candidates selected this week will be among the trustees who will either search for Randina’s replacement or offer her a contract extension.
Election Day is Wednesday, April 27. Polls will be open from 1 to 9 p.m.
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In addition to selecting new board members, voters will also have the opportunity to approve or reject next year’s school budget, which includes a 3.3 percent tax increase that would translate into a $55 annual increase for the average Secaucus homeowner.
School board elections this year will be held on Wednesday, April 27. Polls will be open from 1 to 9 p.m.
New blood
Since one incumbent is not running for reelection this year, there will be at least one newcomer added to the school board, continuing a trend that started three years ago. Since 2008, the school board has almost completely changed its composition and a number of fresh faces have been elected.
While this is Lewis’ second campaign for the board, this is the first year Snedeker, Gutmann, and Carricarte have run.
On the campaign trail, Lewis, a school teacher in Union City, has pitched a message of fiscal responsibility, a theme echoed by Snedeker, who works as the town’s director of Senior and Community services. Carricarte, a retired school teacher, has largely campaigned on the need to put student welfare at the center of school policy.
Businesswoman Dora Marra, who won her first term on the board in 2008, is running for her second term. Fellow incumbent Eleanore Reinl, a retired executive assistant, has been a board trustee for more than three decades. The two women are running on improvements made within the school system over the last three years. These improvements include technology in the classroom, the launch of the Future Teachers Academy, and the integration of SAT prep courses into the curriculum.
School budget on ballot, too
The trustee race will share center stage with the proposed budget for the 2011-2012 school year, which voters can either approve or reject.
Last month the Secaucus Board of Education passed a proposed a $33.1 million budget for the next school year. The spending plan calls for a 3.3 percent tax increase for school taxes, but complies with the new state mandated 2 percent tax cap, since some expenditures are not subject to the cap law. Despite passage by board trustees, the proposed budget must still be approved by voters.
If passed, almost all of the budget – $32.1 million – would come from local taxpayer dollars, with the rest coming from federal and state aid and grants. Although Gov. Christopher Christie took away every penny of state aid to the Secaucus Public School District last year, a move that forced the district to spend down its nearly $800,000 reserve, some state aid was restored for the 2011-2012 school year. For the 2011-2012 school year Secaucus will receive $280,000 (after debt service fees are deducted).
If the voters approve the tax levy, the average assessed Secaucus home worth $160,000 will see an increase of $55 a year, in school taxes. (School taxes comprise a portion of the property taxes residents pay each quarter. Property owners also pay municipal and county taxes, in addition to taxes for the local public school system.)
Because next year’s proposed spending plan includes a 3.3 percent tax increase that follows a 2.5 percent increase last year, some political observes have speculated that the budget could be rejected. Should this happen, the budget would be sent to the Secaucus Town Council. The council would then work with the Board of Education to revise the budget and make spending cuts.
However, Secaucus voters have a long history of supporting the local public education system and of passing the school budget.
Robert Anderson, president of the Secaucus Education Association, the local teachers’ union, said last month that the union will support the budget.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.