The Council is under pressure to burden Borough taxpayers with more than their fair share of school taxes, jeopardizing its ability to provide urgent necessities like new fire trucks.
When you pay property taxes to Chatham Borough or Township, approximately two thirds of your tax dollars go to pay 90% of the cost of running the Chatham schools – around $86 million per year.
That’s a big deal, because how the School Board chooses to spend your tax dollars pretty much determines the quality of education your children get – and the resale value of your house.
How will the School Board opt to spend your money next year? How much will they raise your property taxes?
Find out this Monday, April 24, 7:30 pm, when our School Board votes on the 2023/2024 budget.
Ever wonder who is responsible for making sure our school tax dollars are well spent?
Certainly not our Chatham Borough and Township officials. Yes, they collect the property taxes, but they have no control over the amount of money that goes to the schools – or how it’s spent.
Almost equally powerless are Chatham Borough and Township residents. Sure we pay the property taxes, but we have virtually no control over how the School Board spends our money.
Why? Because we lost control of our schools in 2015, when our School Board decided to stop letting us residents vote on the annual budget.
Since 2015, Chatham parents and residents have had a voice in the operation of our schools only on the rare occasions when the School Board was looking to exceed last year’s budget by more than 2%. That’s rare because the 2% cap excludes certain frequent increases in health and pension costs.
Result? The Chatham School Board is seldom held accountable to anyone.
Consider the $86.3 million budget (linked below) that our School Board expects to adopt at its April 24 meeting. That budget fills 103 pages but it isn’t terribly illuminating. (What, for instance, are the “other purchased services” that are up 100% over last year? p. 13, Line 78100)
Even if there were something dreadful buried in those pages, Chatham residents couldn’t stop it, because the increase over last year’s budget falls under the 2% cap.
And that cap is elastic. For instance, this year’s proposed budget includes a cap bank, which will allow the School Board to exceed the 2% cap by $1 million next year – without triggering a vote on the budget. (p. 31)
Most troubling is the way the proposed budget treats capital spending. It shows a “decrease in capital improvements” next year (p. 13), when in reality the School Board plans to raise our property taxes so it can spend an extra $850,000 on security doors. (p. 32)
The proposal to build security doors falls outside the 2% cap because the School Board has decided to let Chatham residents vote on it next November, along with a proposal to spend an extra $975,000 on full-time teacher’s aides {paraprofessionals.) (p. 33)
Both of those so-called “second questions” seem like worthy causes. If the School Board cannot cover them in the regular budget, then taking them to the voters in November is the right thing to do. But the way the School Board has done it is wrong.
Trouble is, the School Board has positioned both proposals as permanent increases in our property taxes, and in the base budget used to calculate the 2% annual increases going forward, which will yield even higher property taxes.
That may be fine for paying full-time paraprofessionals, because that’s a recurring expense. It is not fine when it comes to installing the security doors, a one-time expense that cannot justify a permanent increase in the school budget.
What would the School Board do with that money in subsequent years? The second question about the security doors doesn’t say.
Why would we allow the School Board to raise our taxes permanently by $850,000 (plus 2% annually forever) without explanation?
The solution is for the School Board to edit the second question to make the purpose explicit, fit the security doors into its regular budget, or else simply reframe that proposal as a one-time expenditure.
If the Board refuses to make that simple correction, we’ll face a tough choice in November: either vote down the security doors or accept a permanent increase in our property taxes for no clear purpose.
Our Borough Council got some good news at its April 10 meeting.
Retired Bloomfield Fire Captain Robert Penn reported that the apartment project going up on River Road is far safer than he had expected. Check out his words at minute 1:29:28:
Of course, our volunteer fire fighters are still hobbled by ancient fire trucks and have no good way to put out fires in the growing number of electric cars.
What do our Mayor and Council have in mind for the Post Office Plaza overhaul that will change our town forever? Nobody knows.
They haven’t even revealed the options under consideration, and yet they expect us to discuss the five final options at a high stakes, mass public Town Hall meeting to be held in the next few weeks!
That’s something not even a professional town planner could do well.
The Mayor ought to reveal the options at this Monday’s Council meeting, so we can be prepared to discuss them at the Town Hall meeting he’s promised to hold before the end of March!
Instead, he’s planning to go into yet another back room session regarding mysterious negotiations with unknown parties.
We need to see those five options well before that special public meeting, so we’ll have a chance to evaluate them.
We need to know that among the options presented will be the one that’s best for Chatham: Satisfy our POP affordable housing quota by subsidizing 15 existing apartments. Make POP more attractive by landscaping and resurfacing the parking lot, and NOT selling, gifting, leasing, or otherwise disposing of any Borough land; or reducing the amount of free, open air, surface public parking; or building any kind of parking garage; or granting a PILOT tax break – or any other kind of corporate welfare. Why? https://chathamchoice.org/2022/02/our-little-town/
With the future of Chatham at stake, we need more than one such special public meeting, something our Mayor explicitly promised on 27 January 2020. (Start at minute 13:00.) https://vimeo.com/387823706?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=40797229
Given the settlement our Mayor and Council approved on June 14, 2021, https://chathamchoice.org/2021/09/, it appears that we have only two real options:
Cave-in, and build a big commercial housing project – smaller perhaps, but similar to the Kushners’ 4-story, 118-rental-unit block that would increase density, choke our streets, rob us of our public parking lot, burden our schools, diminish our quality of life – and probably cost Chatham a bundle, while providing a mere 15 affordable units. https://chathamchoice.org/2022/01/is-this-what-you-want-for-chatham/ OR
Stand firm, and persuade Fair Share Housing to let us preserve our public parking lot and small town quality of life, while satisfying our POP affordable housing quota by subsidizing 15 existing apartments scattered around town. https://chathamchoice.org/2021/10/
Of course, the second option is far better for Chatham and for the newcomers. If we make this choice, they won’t be set aside, crammed between the Post Office and the railroad tracks. They’ll be our next-door-neighbors and an integral part of our community.
In return, we’ll be able satisfy our affordable housing obligations for POP, and gain a bit of diversity, without increasing our population, density, traffic congestion, or air pollution.
As such, if we choose the second option, we won’t need to worry about higher costs for police, schooling, fire fighting, public works, etc. We’ll pay only the difference between the market rent and the affordable rent set by law for those few units – a knowable amount – instead of gambling our future on a big housing complex, whose effect on our net revenues Chatham has never even tried to estimate!
Best of all, by choosing the second option, we’ll preserve our free public parking lot, and our chance to landscape it and add a park, a popular proposal suggested by community leader Fran Drew https://chathamchoice.org/2021/07/dont-sacrifice-chatham-to-the-big-developer/, instead of getting stuck with a White Elephant complex we won’t need as affordable housing law evolves.
How can you help insure that Chatham makes the right choice?
Before we take even one more step with Post Office Plaza, we need to know the costs and implications of each option, as our Mayor first promised in January 2020. (Minute 13) https://vimeo.com/387823706
We’d rather trim the Borough budget a bit – or even increase taxes a little – to subsidize existing apartments, than play Russian roulette with Chatham’s future.
We’re 100% behind the Mayor negotiating to subsidize existing apartments rather than building a new apartment project that will destroy our quality of life, and we are counting on the Council to support that, too.
When they come up for re-election, we will vote accordingly.
At the end of tonight’s Borough Council meeting, our Mayor and Council will be going behind closed doors for a far more intimate encounter – one that could determine the fate of Post Office Plaza.
Let’s just hope they don’t get taken advantage of, and wind up signing another Secret Agreement like the one below, which they approved behind closed doors last June 14 – all but giving away control of Post Office Plaza – and then kept under wraps for months!
give the Kushner partnership yet another extension of time (their sixth!) to come up with a decent design for Post Office Plaza; or
let the Kushners’ exclusive contract expire – and give someone else a chance to design something that might suit us – instead of swamping our roads, schools, police and fire departments, and destroying our quality of life in Chatham Borough?
Which way will the Mayor and Council decide to go? To find out, tune in this Monday, Jan 24, at 7:30 pm using this link:
