No tax increase is not enough to pass the budget

Budgets voted down with no tax increases:

BOUND BROOK

0 percent; no tax increase for a home assessed at $300,000

PROPOSED STAFF CUTS
27 employees


lebanon township


PROPOSED TAX LEVY INCREASE
0 percent

PROPOSED STAFF CUTS
4.5 positions

Perhaps someone from these towns could post here what they were looking for to pass the budget.

results so far: people are pawns for Chris Christie

Chris Christie may be saying students are pawns for teachers, but it appears the truth (at least so far) is the voters are pawns for Chris Christie.

On the results that have been counted so far I have yet to find a budget that was approved.  Even in cases where the taxes were not increased or only slightly increased and staff cuts occurred to make up the 5% reduction in state aid it appears the budgets were rejected.

It makes me wonder what, if any, budget would have been approved. 

I'm still hopeful for better results as more towns report.

I should also mention - I am not a member of the NJEA and I don't have any children.  I am, however, trying to protect the value of my property which I believe is largely driven by the quality of schools in the area.

I am also all for cutting budgets where there is waste.  I am simply against blanket cuts without even understanding the details.

Election Results

I'm waiting for the election results and I am hopeful that voters took my recommendation to look at the facts and vote accordingly instead of listening to Chris Christie and his incorrect blanket statements.  There are some towns that have clearly done a fantastic job with their budgets and others that need some work.  As the results come in we can look and see if there is any relationship between the efficiency of the towns and the yes/not vote to the budget.

For the sake of the schools and our property values let's hope voters gets it right.

Get the facts before voting on your school budget!

Chris Christie would like you to believe that every school district in NJ is wasting millions of dollars.  Unfortunately, this is not true.  There are certainly some districts out there that are guilty of wasting a ton of money and others are doing a fantastic job.

Chris Christie knows which districts are well behaved and which are not. His own staff even published a full report on school district spending.

Read the report, check out your own district, and decide for yourself where cuts should and should not occur before making blanket statements not backed by fact.

Drumthwacket costs $500K/year

Actually, it probably costs a lot more.  The most recent numbers I could find were from 2006 in this article from bloomberg.com that says the governor house costs $500K/year. 

I'm waiting for the Chris Christie plan to save that cash for something else, but I won't hold my breath.

Average Salary by County w/ 1 & 2 years experience

ATLANTIC	$45,190
BERGEN	$48,469
BURLINGTON	$49,517
CAMDEN	$47,924
CAPE MAY	$44,991
CHARTER	$44,751
CUMBERLAND	$48,780
ESSEX	$52,387
GLOUCESTER	$45,655
HUDSON	$49,792
HUNTERDON	$48,032
MERCER	$49,003
MIDDLESEX	$48,374
MONMOUTH	$48,013
MORRIS	$49,094
OCEAN	$46,929
PASSAIC	$49,730
SALEM	$45,410
SOMERSET	$51,009
SUSSEX	$47,070
UNION	$52,582
WARREN	$45,851

This chart represents the average salaries of the teachers that will be laid off under Chris Christies' plan.  Almost every average is lower than $50K. 

Since there is no plan to encourage early retirement or cuts in administration spending the actual layoffs will be in mostly non tenured teachers with less than 3 years of experience.  In the table above I have averaged together teachers from the APP data with 1 & 2 years experience (1st year omitted because many first year start in the middle of the year which results in a partial year salary being reported)

UPS Drivers make more than teachers

According to this yahoo finance article on UPS, they are looking for some new drivers.  The article futher states that the average salary for a UPS driver is $74K a year.  From my previous post on average teacher salaries you can see this is significantly more than the average NJ teacher.  It should be noted this average UPS salary includes the whole country while the teacher numbers are only in the high cost of living area of NJ.

It would be interesting to make a list of other jobs that pay better than teaching.