file photo by Boyd Loving
Reader says Bigger Class sizes would say more than ditching the paid Fire department
Read your tax bill carefully. The ‘municipal’ portion of the taxes (fire, police, streets, sanitation) isn’t the reason your taxes go sky high. Its the schools portion (75%). Having paid firefighters who respond immediately upon receiving the call is the reason your homeowner’s insurance rates are cheaper than towns where you have to wait for a volunteer to drive to the station, grab the engine THEN respond to the fire.
Ridgewood could never fully staff a fire dept with volunteers. They can’t even do that with the ambulance. Want to save money on taxes? Pay attention to the schools portion, with generous salaries and benefits. Maybe increase class size to 30 kids and you’ll save a bundle. When I attended the schools here in the 1970′s we did just fine with large classes.
This argument has been had in the early 90’s no matter how you look at it the school budget is the tax problem. Other “commitee’s panels and consultants have all tried to get around it but no matter how you look at it the ridgewood school budget is still over 90 million dollars that is more than the total tax levy for several area municipalities.
Yes, but don’t touch the sacred cow. To think the want to give the superintendent more than his 200k salary. Its all “ass backwards “
yes the school is the number one problem. then comes fire , then police. other village services are very cheep.
I thought by decree from the whale in Trenton no superintendant could make more than him? The whale only makes 175,000.00 (yeah right) how is the rwd guy over 200,000.00?
RFD should try to off set its cost by covering surrounding towns whose volunteers are few during weekdays, for a small fee of course
that was disscussed in the late 90’s regarding ho ho kus and glen rock there was insufficent itntrest from the other town. the word was the volunteer town didn’t want to incurr more expense.