>Sheila Brogan’s recent letter fighting against the Superintendent’s salary cap is a prime example of why taxes will always be excessive in Ridgewood
It’s a shame that Ridgewood doesn’t seem to value singles, empty nesters and seniors who may not want the bulk of their tax dollars paying for education and fields and lights and mistakes. As someone else here said, the town needs this demographic. A town populated only with families with children places even greater demands on over-crowded schools, that apparently can only be solved by spending more money.
The premise of the last school bond referendum was that the state of NJ was going to provide a one time grant, and if we didn’t pass the budget immediately we would lose it. Well, we lost it anyway because the BOE was uninformed and didn’t bother to consider that the grant was coming on the heels of an election and might not be guaranteed. So they scared the voters into passing the referendum, received no money from the state after all, which was the basis of their argument to begin with. I don’t know how the shortfall was made up but I’m sure it came out of our pockets somehow.
Sheila Brogan’s recent letter fighting against the Superintendent’s salary cap is a prime example of why taxes will always be excessive in Ridgewood. The mentality is spend, spend, spend, and even if there is a mandate telling us not to spend, the BOE will find a way to spend anyway. Before the BOE goes full speed ahead fighting against this mandate, maybe they should find out whether the taxpayers support it or not. Personally I think it’s not unreasonable to cut some of these salaries and in this economy with so many people out of work, I’m sure jobs won’t be hard to fill if necessary. In spite of the BOE’s ability to spend without limit in the past, the Superintendent’s position has still been a revolving door for many years, including two failed hires (one didn’t finish his contract, the other resigned before he even started), several “acting” superintendents, not to mention the search firms and consultants retained to assist them in these searches, multiple times. Talk about a monumental waste of money. The bulk of the budget and therefore taxes goes to educaton salaries, and Ridgewood, unlike Glen Rock, was unable to negotiate even a temporary freeze on teacher’s salaries, let alone a reduction of salaries or benefits, thereby again losing state dollars. They are woefully ineffective when it comes to saving money. It’s just not in their vocabulary because to them, money equals excellence.
If people want to see a change in Ridgewood then we have to stop automatically reelecting incumbents, and remember that Newark is a prime example of the fact that money doesn’t necessarily guarantee great schools.
