Reader says Never before have the Ridgewood BOE and municipal budgets ever been stretched so thin
Never before have the Ridgewood BOE and municipal budgets ever been stretched so thin. During each of those waves in Ridgewood’s growth you mention above the BOE was still able to maintain their buildings and absorb the growth that resulted from these apartments. That is no longer the case. Our budget cannot afford to repair our current buildings, hire more teachers or build more classrooms. Unless you are looking for another $48 million dollar bond referendum in less than 5 years.
As a parent, I am tired of paying taxes and then being told that I need to raise money to pay for an outdated and unsafe playground, or new risers to replace the unsafe 30 year old ones for my child’s vocal concert or buy non-fiction books to fill the classroom libraries. All of that was covered by our BOE budget before years and years of this gradual growth.
All this growth also occurred before our streets were so filled with cars that even the traffic experts say we can’t handle one more car on our streets. I’m not sure how many pedestrians were hit by cars back then, but I’m guessing it was less than half the number we have today.
The point is, what is being proposed is a change to the Master Plan which would allow for enormous and sudden growth. Nothing like what you outlined above.
Talk to the Prinipals at the various schools. They will tell you that the cap on the budget is starting to have real effects on what they can do. The BOE “budget” is already “subsidized” by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (if not more) from individual, activity and sports related fund raising that goes on from the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. Fees for supplies, field trips, classroom upgrades, etc….all of which used to be “in the budget” are now additional costs. With a 2% maximum increase in the budget and something like annual 1.5% salary raises and continued rising costs in health care, the end effect is going to be “cuts.” And those cuts are going to have to come from a lot of different places. Cuts to administrators, cuts to teachers, cuts to programs, cuts to class offerings, cuts to drives ed, cuts to athletics, etc…. The schools are going to have to become more efficient, and offer less.
who is getting 1.5% annual pay raises and subsidized healthcare and pensions in the private sector ?