South Brunswick Votes 'No' On Ballot Question For School Spending. What Next
SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — During the Nov. 5 election, South Brunswick residents rejected a spending proposal question put forward by the school district.
The South Brunswick Board of Education sought voter approval to raise an additional $350,000 for General Funds in the 2024-2025 school year through a tax levy.
If the question was approved, taxes would have been used to fund recreational usage for students and adults of certain District facilities from Monday through Saturday.
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These faculties included tennis courts and the high school track.
But with all 30 districts reporting, 8,588 residents (53.71%) voted ‘no’ on the question and 7,402 (46.29%) voted ‘yes’. While some mail-in ballots are yet to be counted and the elections are yet to be certified, it doesn’t seem like the gap would narrow by much. As a result of the ballot question failing, the community will not be able to use school facilities.
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The question was put to voters after the school district received several requests to expand the usage of facilities to residents.
If approved, it would have raised local taxes by less than 1 percent a month for the average home owner.
With the district facing drastic state aid cuts, the one-year ability to raise taxes got them closer to the town’s “local fair share” and was used to reinstate educational needs for students.
But it does not provide a permanent solution to its finances and the idea of routing money to non-educational wants, was just not in the cards, according to Superintendent Scott Feder.
“Now add the years of requests for community use of certain school facilities – the track and tennis courts require upkeep and have an expense for usage which is budgeted to support students. There is no usage expense associated with community use. So, this question provided for funds to be set aside each year to maintain and support community use,” Feder said.
He also noted that the Township Recreation Department uses school facilities extensively to support both student and adult athletic programming.
“This has a cost to the school district budget to support the Township programming, but at this time, there is no monies provided to the district from the Township for these expenses,” Feder said.
As the State completely separates the Township and school budgets, currently the South Brunswick does not incur any cost for using school facilities and all expenses are borne by the school district budget, Feder said.
“This question also would have provided direct funding to support this expense. The final piece was to hire a dedicated employee that could coordinate and support the community use of district facilities and work on increasing revenues associated with facility rentals,” Feder said.
With the question failing, the use of facilities will stay exactly as they have been, which means the community will still have no access.
With regard to the Recreation Department using the facilities, the district said they will discuss the matter with the Township and funding sources.
“The district had earlier proposed a fee to the Township for usage to offset the school district’s cost so that our funds can be directed to students and not facility supports. Finally, the position to manage facilities will not be created,” Feder said.
“When a question fails, it prohibits the district from expending funds for the areas requested in the question. Therefore, there is no plan to make any changes as far as facility use for the community and as stated above, discussions will ensue with the Township on funding for the very positive rec program.”
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