School Budget Rejection A Mini “Tea Party”
Yesterday was an important day in my home state of New Jersey. Townships across the state held general elections for their respective boards of education as well as their school budgets. The budgets have become a hot button issue as they have direct bearing on property taxes.
New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the United States and as people continue to feel the pinch of the recession they are growing more and more unhappy with the high rates they are paying. In my township people have been appealing their property taxes in droves in protest of the high property tax rate. Now comes a school budget that, if passed, would raise property taxes 7.3%. No other township had a proposed tax hike greater than 4%.
Not surprisingly this vote had the highest voter turnout than it has had in recent years. Over 7,000 people voted in all. More people (3,947) voted No this year than voted (either way) last year (3519) as the budget was voted down. (Still a low number for a township whose population is over 44,000 but that subject is for a different rant.)
The budget now goes before the town council who can pass or reject the budget regardless of the vote. The last time a school budget was voted down the town council passed it anyway. But with their own election next month they can’t just rubber stamp the budget and expect the incumbents to retain their jobs.
What happened in my township has happened all over the state where over 50% of the school budgets were rejected. Most years over 70% pass.
The people’s rejection of the budget is less a condemnation of the budget itself as it is a condemnation of anything that will result in their already high taxes being raised even more. This is just one of many examples of people protesting their taxes over the last year or so. The biggest example of this is the “tea party”, a series of protests against taxes that takes it’s name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which American colonists destroyed 3 ship loads of highly taxed tea from Britain.
The town council should heed this message when considering the school budget at their next meeting. The tide has just begun to rise and the under currents will be very strong.
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