Now, normally I wouldn't mind reading these press releases except for one thing - the budget wasn't made public yet. The piece says 'The preliminary budget was presented at the Board of Education's Feb. 20 caucus meeting. The board was expected to discuss and vote on adopting the package on Feb. 25.' Don't know if they did or not but they usually would make the preliminary budget available to the public at that Feb. 25 meeting.
Recognize they're still waiting for state aid numbers but if they were going to make this budget public - they could of just as easily put out a preliminary budget to the public subject to change for the final state aid numbers.
Really, you going to hold up a budget of some $213.8 million because you don't know whether the state aid number is $13.5 million or $14.5 million? If last year's budget is any indication, they'll just use any increase in state aid to increase their $pending - and you won't see it because you don't have a preliminary budget to see the numbers and look at now.
They didn't give out any preliminary budget - so, O'Malley can quote all the numbers he thinks are important and say whatever he wants to unchallenged since we have no way of knowing what's actually in this budget. Not for nothing but he's the last guy I'd want to see talking about budget numbers and making budget presentations - and, especially when you don't have the same budget he's looking at.
Well, guess it's not public yet unless it goes in a Sentinel piece. That's Not nice.
Just curious - what's going to happen now? Are they going to call another meeting to give out the preliminary budget and have a public discussion or are they just going to skip to the March 21 meeting for final adoption?
Anyhoo, good thing O'Malley didn't tell us in this piece what this Preliminary 2013-14 Budget does to Last Year's $2.668 School Tax Rate here in Downtown Edison.
Shhh..it's a secret!!
PS - of course we don't know what's in this budget or what they used for state aid but based on the 2013-14 tax levy of $191.1 million quoted - this preliminary budget has a School Tax Rate of $2.710, which is up 4.2-Cents or 1.6% over Last Year's $2.668. That's just wonderful.
PS - of course we don't know what's in this budget or what they used for state aid but based on the 2013-14 tax levy of $191.1 million quoted - this preliminary budget has a School Tax Rate of $2.710, which is up 4.2-Cents or 1.6% over Last Year's $2.668. That's just wonderful.
No comments:
Post a Comment