This Years Budget Process was NOT Normal

John Sincaglia

I recently posted an article on Facebook where I criticized some of the recent actions of the Board of Education.  Perhaps the most important job of the Board is the approval of the annual budget.  I was quite dismayed at the way that process was conducted this year and sent an email to the 2 Board officers explaining my concerns. This was sent shortly after the Board voted to adopt the Tentative Budget.  I never received a reply from either, and I have no idea if my email was shared with other members of the Board or the administration. I have decided to post that letter now to again demonstrate the need for the Board to change the way they are currently functioning. 

Full Email and Attachments:

From: John Sincaglia <[email protected]>
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; [email protected] <[email protected]>
Sent: Sat, Mar 26, 2022 2:51 pm
Subject: 2022-23 Budget

Dear Angela and Michael:

The recent process of the Board’s 2022-23 Budget was, in my opinion, a travesty.  I’m not sure if it is a responsible budget or not, but as far as the process goes in informing your fellow Board members, not to mention the public, it was awful.

Your recent letter to the TAP editor that stated that it is “standard practice” to only give 24 hours’ notice has no basis in fact or reality. I served on the Board for 12 years and was on the Finance committee all those years including 10 of which I was Chairman. I can tell you that never did we suddenly provide the rest of the Board with Budget documentation that required a vote in such a short time frame. Further, as someone whose professional career included more than 20 years as a school business administrator who was responsible for developing budgets, never would I have even considered, not to mention not being allowed, to suddenly provide my board with a budget requiring a vote with one day notice. If your administration is telling you that this is the norm, I would seriously question the accuracy of that statement.

I happened to still have some of my files and emails from my service on the Board. In my last year on the Board, we proposed the 2016-17 Budget. We had an outline of the major changes that was discussed by the full Board at our meeting on Feb. 25, 2016. The full Board was provided with about 20 pages of detailed information regarding the proposed tentative Budget, which we did not vote on until March 10. (I am going to attach what we did that year, and you can decide if what was given this year on one day’s notice is comparable) This gave the Board ample time to analyze, comment and suggest modifications.  What I observed at your March 17 meeting was a Board listening to a presentation. without benefit of a full comparison of prior and current year information, and then voting to approve it with not one item added, deleted, reduced or increased.  According to what I am seeing in TAP, including your own letter, Board members were not permitted to have printed information, including apparently the Finance committee.  Your letter states it was for obvious reasons. Unless there were specific references to personnel or negotiations information (any of which could have been redacted), there is absolutely no possible reason to withhold this relevant information from the people who must vote to approve it. This was never done in this district, and I would be surprised to find any Board that would sanction such a practice.

Your letter states that there is time between the Tentative Budget being adopted and the date of final adoption, which is April 28, to make changes. When and how is that supposed to happen when there are no Board meetings scheduled until April 28? Where is public’s right to examine and comment on this nearly 60-million-dollar plan except on April 28 with any possibility of changes being made? Mike, as someone who served on the Township Council where their budget process included several public meetings to develop their annual budget, how do you justify the inability of public scrutiny when all we got to see was a power point presentation that wasn’t available until that evening. By the way, when is the public going to see the tentative budget?

The district has apparently benefitted by a decent increase in state aid, as well as some long-term debt being retired. Neither of those things is an excuse to budget up to cap and take advantage of cap adjustments.  Year in year out citizens are crying out for tax relief and often criticize school boards for excessive administrative costs. We have on the other hand added an additional Assistant Superintendent and are planning to add a full-time assistant to the Business Administrator. Since I have resided in Berkeley Heights (34 years), the district never had or even recommended these positions, and during all those years we functioned quite well. I fail to understand how we suddenly need to increase our administrative staff when we have the same number of facilities and less students on roll. I can’t tell if there are other issues in the budget that deserve answers, because except for overall totals, there was no information on prior year(s), and current year provided which often forms the basis for justification of proposed revenues and appropriations.

What I see occurring in the way business seems to be conducted is processes that seek to restrict public scrutiny and an unwillingness to be responsive to the citizenry.   This was evident during last year’s consideration of redistricting and the “new” process of how residents’ questions are handled. We did not operate this way under Superintendents Dr. Stovall, Dr. Bozza or Mrs. Rattner, and under Board Presidents Kirsch, Beisser, myself, and at least most of Mr. Reinstein’s terms. 

It pains me to add that I am very disappointed in how the Board as a whole has functioned the last year or so.  The most important thing a school board does each year is to construct and approve a budget.  It is your plan for what is going to take place in the coming year and your report to the public on how and why you are going to spend about 58% of the property taxes. You really need to schedule another meeting between now and April 28 and provide the Board and the public with much more detailed information so we can have an honest and open discussion about the plan to provide for our pupils next year.  

Attachments to Email:

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