Dear Editor:
I am glad to see that my school board colleague Theresa Minutillo, who has chaired the finance committee for two years, has come around to seeing my simple point that Hoboken’s school taxes went up last year. I’m sorry she felt the need to say in last week’s Letters that I don’t “tell the truth” before she acknowledged that the tax rate for the school portion of the tax bill went up 1.95 percent.
Unfortunately, she still wants to promote the canard that the school board has nothing to do with taxes going up or down. The board merely sets the tax levy, she wants you to believe, and if mean tax-hike people at some county office decide taxes must go up to pay that levy, then it’s their fault and certainly not the board’s.
Last year’s school tax levy – the amount set by the board – was $36.7 million. The preliminary budget presented to the board last month by the business administrator has a proposed tax levy of $36.7 million. I have little doubt that unless we cut that levy significantly, this will translate into another round of tax hikes as the economy stays stagnant and more homeowners win reassessments. She may not understand how the tax levy results in a tax bill. But you and I do.
She also doesn’t understand what she is voting on. On the January agenda was a list of field trips, including one for the fifth, sixth and seventh graders at Connors to go to the county jail. When I asked about it, we were all told by then Supt. Peter Carter that it was for all the students, and that it was a “scared straight” program. He told us all what a fine program that was and how it would be good for all the students. Board member Carmelo Garcia suggested to him that the trip was just for at-risk students and Mr. Carter told him, no, it was for everybody. When I said it was a bad idea, Ms. Minutillo remarked that it was not the job of the board to second-guess the superintendent and principal. I said the board isn’t a rubber stamp and that the trip wouldn’t be on the agenda and we wouldn’t be voting on it if it were a done deal.
Ms. Minutillo and “Kids First” (Irene Sobolov, Rose Markle, Leon Gold, Jean Marie Mitchell and Ruth McAllister) voted to send all the 10-, 11- and 12-year-old girls and boys at Connors on a “scared straight” trip to jail. Of course, the revisionist history soon began when the public reacted negatively. At the February meeting, our new interim superintendent stated that the trip would be for six “at risk” kids only. But don’t be fooled, that was not what “Kids First” voted for.
When I was elected, I promised to fight for the students and taxpayers and do it transparently. I wasn’t elected to sugar-coat serious problems and pat myself on the back on a regular basis.
Maureen Sullivan,
School Board Trustee