Christie’s Increased Suburban Education Funding Won’t Result In Immediate Property Tax Relief
By Art Gallagher
The $150 million in increased suburban education funding in Governor Christie’s budget came too late to impact most school budgets for the 2011-2012 school year, according to an article at NJSpotlight.
When the Christie administration announced the final state education funding figures last week they encouraged districts to use the money for property tax relief. A follow up memo later in the week included a deadline of tomorrow if the districts wanted to include the extra money in the coming year’s tax levy. To do so, school boards would have had to publish notices of special meetings on Thursday or Friday of last week and hold those meetings today or tomorrow.
Most school districts will carry the money in surplus accounts in the coming year.
MMM does not refer to state money for suburban education as “aid” as that implies the money is not ours to begin with. “Funding” is a more accurate term.
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The value of my home continues to decline while my taxes increase, stores continue to close, gas is $3.50 a gallon—-BUT, the edumafia is running a surplus so now l can sleep better as this State swirls down the drain…………
For many suburban districts that had their state aid cut in 10-11 equal to 5% of their total budget, the new 11-12 aid levels restore about 40% of the amount that was cut in 10-11.
So for example if your districts state aid was $8 million (of a $40 million budget) and cut by $2 million in 10-11 to $6 million, roughly $800k of that cut will be restored in 11-12 however you are still $1.2 million below 09-10 state aid levels.
Note that nothing has been said about returning the $450 million in local property taxpayer provided surplus funds that were taken by the state in early 2010 so that it could plug up the holes in its own budget. Those local funds could have been used as revenue (property tax relief) in future years school budgets but are no longer available for that purpose and as of now need to be replaced locally when needed.