Manalapan Taxes Increase, Englishtown Taxes Decrease for MERS Budget

The Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District 2012-2013 budget will cause a property tax increase in Manalapan and property tax decrease for Englishtown. The budget was presented at last night’s Board of Education meeting at where the Board unanimously adopted it; Board Members Joseph DePasquale and Diane Bindler were absent.

The $80,147,031 budget will raise Manalapan property tax values $0.92 per every $100 of assessed value and Englishtown will see a decrease of $0.781 per every $100 of assessed value, Business Administrator and Board Secretary Veronica Wolf explained while presenting the budget last night.

Wolf explained that the district is currently in a period of declining enrollment due to the completion of a lot of Manalapan and Englishtown construction which brought in more residents. This drop in enrollment will impact state aid figures for the future because the new formula which determines state aid is heavily based on enrollment numbers, according to Wolf.

This year’s budget has increased 5.06 percent increase, which is a significant jump from the 0.6 percent increase between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 budgets. The district took money out of Capital Reserve accounts in order to accomplish the two roof replacements needed for Pine Brook School and Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School, and that is the reason for the $4 million dollar change between the 2012-2013 budget and the 2011-2012 budget. The money from the Capital Reserve has been saved up by the district over several years. The actual increase in the Operating Budget, however, only increased 1.75 percent, Wolf said.

The 2012-2013 budget is beneath the 2 percent tax levy cap, as mandated by state law, by $718,059 which is approximately a 1.02 percent tax levy increase from last year. The total tax levy is $51,552,572.

“We recognize that while we could go further, we really don’t want to put that burden on the taxpayer,” Wolf said. “It is directly on the taxpayer, it’s not funded by state aid or any other way, and we just felt to be prudent that we couldn’t do that at this point in time, given the economy.”

The majority of General Fund revenues for the budget is comprised of the tax levy and the second largest chunk comes from state aid. This year the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District received $19,916,220 in state aid. This amount reflects the full funding formula and a 50 percent reduction in adjustment aid, or the amount of aid the district used to receive in the past.

Gov. Christie aims to eventually eliminate adjustment aid, Superintendent John J. Marciante Jr. said. Because of this cut, the district lost about $320,000 from the state. The district will continue to see a 50 percent reduction in adjustment aid over the next few years, but the impact will be less going forward; the biggest cut was this year, Marciante said.

This budget also does not include the automatic tax levy waiver for Health Benefit costs that was made available to this district, which would have allowed the district go above the tax levy cap by $700,000.

Over the past four years the district has decreased staff and increased efficiency all within the 2 percent cap and while large cuts in state aid were occurring, according to the  superintendent. There will be no reductions of academic programs, activity fees suspension and field trip funding has been maintained, three elementary teaching positions have been assigned in order to reduce class size, additional academic enrichment teacher has been hired for the 1-5 enrichment program, the project read initiative will continue, supply accounts are minted at reduced levels and a new teacher evaluation system has been funded all under this budget.