Ho-Ho-Kus Board of Education
Ballot Question for Voter Authorization to Exceed Tax Levy Limitation
Question:
In addition to the regular budget, shall the Ho-Ho-Kus Board of Education raise an additional $450,000 in taxes for the 20182019 school year? These taxes will be used to restore cocurricular clubs and athletics that the Board of Education eliminated from the budget, hire an additional teacher, hire a security aide, and pay for technology equipment costs and the Board of Education’s STEAM program. Approval of these taxes will result in a permanent increase to the tax levy.
Interpretative Statement:
State law caps the amount by which boards of education may increase taxes. To increase taxes beyond the cap, the law requires the Board of Education to obtain voter approval. Approval of this proposal will lead to a permanent increase in the tax levy, meaning the additional $450,000 will be added to the current tax levy to set the permissible tax levy for future school years.
The Board of Education will use the $450,000 tax increase exclusively for the following purposes. $91,950 of the increase will finance the salary and health benefits for one additional teacher for Grades 6 through 8 Technology Lab. $12,600 of the tax increase will finance the salary of a security aide for 20 hours per week. $52,782 of the tax increase will finance the restoration of co-curricular clubs and athletics which includes payment of contractual stipends for club advisors and coaches and the expenses for supplies. The remaining $292,668 of the tax increase will go towards technology and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) program expenses which include software licensing, educational consultants for the STEAM initiative, staff development, technology equipment expenses, expansion of the 1:1 Chromebooks program to Grade 4, replacement of computers in classrooms, replacement of projectors for smartboards, 40 new Chromebooks for the media center, upgrade internal cabling, upgrade security cameras and pay associated camera maintenance expenses, security system costs, replace computer switches and servers, replace smartboards, and upgrade and maintain the TV studio. All of these expenditures are in addition to those necessary to achieve the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.
A group called Ho Ho Kus Concerned Tax Payers had this response :
$624,000 + $373,000 + potentially $450,000 = $1,447,000 INCREASE this year!
When inside this posting see the input received from a local resident in More Facts 100418 which is very detailed, informative, and supports the following statements made in that document:
1.”…the proposed budget (excluding the SSP) raises the spending per pupil at [to] $16,182, which is higher than the state average $15,955. Including the SSP we are projected to increase to $16,932.”
2.“It appears contradictory that when the state is looking to ease individual, local school tax burden by increasing its funding, we (HHK) rush to force through a significant, permanent increase, which in the same volume and essentially same format, was rejected by HHK voters last year.”
3.”This is predicted to increase the annual, permanent funding to the school by about $1.7 million (to which additional state funding increase is expected) and our local, annual tax burden by close to $1,000 over a three year period.”
4.”While the NJ school tax cap increase is nominally fixed at 2%, the cap law contains several adjustments that give the BOE the automatic power to increase above 2%, making the effective rate increase more often larger….The 2018 HHK CAP increase for example is 2.6%….Per HHK BOE documentation provided in 2017 the effective average increase of the school taxes in HHK is more than 3% per year since the institution of the CAP (this is due to the adjustments and the compounding effect of the annual increases).”
