Maureen Sullivan has been consistent in saying that the budget needs to be cut but has refused to date to provide a comprehensive plan as to how she will legally and practically accomplish that task. Instead we get drips and drabs and nickels and dimes. I don't doubt Maureen's desire to cut the school budget just her ability to do it in a way that first of all legally can be done and secondly without harming the education of the children. This letter mentions overtime for the transportation so that is a start but where is that "long list of ideas for cuts and cost-saving measures aimed at bringing down the district’s budget" ?
The Hoboken Journal has been waiting for almost two years for that from Maureen. My face is turning blue from holding my breath:). Maureen's conduct on this budget issue is very similar to Beth Mason and Mike Russo on the City Council spouting off about small lines items when the big items such as union contracts are the real way to control spending. At least she mentions one potentially valid item, that of transportation overtime. The rest of her letter is nothing but the pettiness of personal politics. I will acknowledge though that pettiness in on both sides. Our children deserve better.
Here is Maureen (Beth Mason Lite) Sullivan's vindictive email once again short on the details of the cuts she claims she has proposed:
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER SULLIVAN BOOTED FROM BUDGET MEETING
Gold: I am not a man of my word
Gold: I am not a man of my word
Sullivan came to the meeting armed with a long list of ideas for cuts and cost-saving measures aimed at bringing down the district’s tentative $58 million budget for 2011-12 and avoiding a school tax increase for the second year in a row. But the Kids First contingent refused to begin the meeting with Sullivan in the room, hurled abuse at her for five minutes and then finally stormed out of the room and moved the meeting elsewhere in the district offices on Clinton Street. "Go (f-word) yourself," said Board President Rose Markle as she left the room.
Sullivan noted that when someone you’re debating resorts to profanity, you’ve won the argument. "It's not unexpected," said Sullivan. "Kids First has gone back on every claim they ever made about getting the enormously high spending under control. It’s clear that Kids First still has no interest in providing our taxpayers with some relief, and they didn’t want to be presented with some ideas that would put them on the spot. I came to talk about the budget and instead I'm met with the type of thuggish, machine-style behavior they once claimed to abhor."
At the Feb. 8 public board meeting, after a heated discussion about the rising school taxes, board member Frances Rhodes-Kearns suggested that Sullivan take part in the next finance committee meeting to present her budget proposals. Board member Leon Gold, who sits on the finance committee, then volunteered to give up his seat to Sullivan. To avoid violating sunshine laws, only four members of the board are allowed to sit on a committee, and Sullivan would have been a fifth without Gold’s offer. The finance committee is chaired by Theresa Minutillo. The other members are Irene Sobolov and Markle. They meet once a month with the district’s business administrator.
Gold had a change of heart last week. In an email to the board late Saturday night, he reneged on his public offer, saying, "I unfortunately forgot that this upcoming meeting was to review next year’s proposed budget." Sullivan responded in an email to the board that Gold could not extend an invitation in public, have it accepted, and then withdraw it in private without Sullivan’s consent. No board members responded, so Sullivan went to Thursday’s meeting, where Gold told her that he "made a mistake" by offering to step aside.
"When I asked him today if he was a man of his word, he told me he wasn't," she said."That didn't seem to bother him or the others."
Sullivan was elected to the board in 2009 on a platform of weeding out waste in the district’s bloated budget and cutting taxes while making major improvements to the schools, but for the second year in a row there has been no opportunity for the full board to meet in closed or open session to publicly discuss the budget as it was developed. Finance Chair Minutillo has never called on all board members to make suggestions or created a process or a venue for that to happen. Unlike many other districts, Hoboken hasn't held public hearings during the lead-up to a final budget. Many of Sullivan’s suggested cuts involve personnel, contracts or other private matters and cannot be discussed in an open meeting or released to the public. On Jan. 11, the business administrator proposed a budget for next year that’s bigger than the budget approved a year ago, and today’s finance meeting was the only chance Sullivan would have had to discuss it before it must go to the county superintendent for approval on Friday, March 4.
The controversy began in January when the district’s auditors released their annual report, which noted that the tax rate for the schools portion of the Hoboken tax bill went from 1.176 to 1.199 per $100 of assessed value, a 1.95% tax increase from 2009 to 2010. Kids First had claimed that taxes stayed flat, and in the argument before the meeting Thursday, Markle continued to claim that school taxes have not gone up. "Rose told me today that the tax hike is all due to the county, when a simple reading of a tax bill, online or the one you get in the mail, shows that’s not true,” said Sullivan. “It's incredible to me that our board president doesn’t even know that she and her fellow homeowners are paying more in school taxes."
Sullivan said there are myriad cuts that could be made to the budget that would total into the millions of dollars, but other board members have never expressed any interest in hearing them. Sullivan sits on the facilities/technology/transportation committee and pointed to a few instances of waste in just one of those departments as an example. That committee met Monday but Committee Chair Jean Marie Mitchell told her there was no time to discuss issues such as the recently updated transportation report from the consulting firm EarthSpec. The board also declined to discuss the report at last month’s public meeting. In the report, which Sullivan described as “devastating,” the company finds that overtime "remains a significant expense for the district." The transportation director, who the report says should be part of management, made $12,427 in overtime in just six months (equaling 37% of his base pay for that period.) The mechanic was paid $10,632 in overtime, though the report says "there is no reason this employee should incur overtime." The report also slaps the district for employing six bus aides who collect benefits, and pointed out that hiring full-time aides was a practice unheard of in the industry. It says the total savings would rise “exponentially” if all of its recommendations were implemented.
"I'm the only board member who seems concerned that we're spending nearly $22,000 per pupil when the state average is less than $14,000, and that this will likely go up this year as the budget grows and enrollment continues to decline," said Sullivan. "In January, we had fewer than 1,800 students in kindergarten through grade 12."Hoboken school board member Maureen Sullivan was barred from taking her seat at the finance committee meeting Thursday morning. Kids First members on the committee refused to honor an agreement they had made at the February board meeting.
- BOE Member Maureen Sullivan ◦
