Perspective On Tomorrow's Vote

Lots of budget talk today on the Patch, that's not a surprise.  What is a surprise to me is the amount of people posting saying that they are parents who now want to vote against the budget because of the reduction of the SRO from the previous budget.

First of all, I agree that the reduction is a bitter pill.  But at the end of the day, when the budget goes down, hard choices have to be made.  Because there is the possiblity of federal funding coming through for this but nothing else in the budget, the decision was made to reduce funding in this area. 

Voting against the budget out of anger against this decision is not going to restore the funding.  In fact, it will virtually guarantee that a further reduction is made in this area. Right now they surely can make the scheduling of the officers work, especially if funding comes through.  But if the vote goes down, there will almost certainly be another cut to SROs.

I don't know about you, but in light of what happened today with the lockdown at Jockey Hollow and Fawn Hollow, I would definitely not want to see that happen.  I'm not going to lie, I've been a bit skeptical about the SROs in the budget.  But today, when I got that email?  I was pretty happy to know that those police were there, right on site, doing whatever needed to be done to keep those kids safe. 

I analyzed the budget mill rate numbers for a typical house in Monroe last week.  And I was pretty shocked to find out that for a 3 bedroom, 2000 sq foot colonial, the cuts to the budget so far saved that family a whopping $13 next year.

When I went to the budget meeting a week and a half ago, Mr. Ernest LaFolette of the CAC stated he would support a budget that included $600,000 of cuts to the Board of Education and $400,000 of cuts to the town budget.  This would produce, he said, a 3 % tax increase (rather than the 3.93 % one that is currently on the ballot). 

So when I was crunching those numbers, I decided to see what that typical family would save if Mr. LaFolette got his way.  I mean, surely all the SROs would be gone, so would Full Day Kindergarten.  The Town Council Chair Enid Lipeles said we'd have to consider reduced hours at the library, pool and/or Senior Center.  Probably another cut to the road maintenance budget.  Surely more teachers would get laid off, because you can't achieve a $600,000 cut anywhere else on a 1.3 % budget when 1.1 % is fixed contractual obligations. 

I discovered that family would save $71 for next year if the budget was cut by that million dollars.  Divided by twelve that's just over $6 per month.  Now I'm not going to say $71 isn't nothing, because it's not.  It's your kids' school supplies, it's groceries, clothes, medicine. 

But I personally would be willing to pay that $6 a month for those SROs, for that Full Day K, for our roads and our library.  I would.  Today, looking at that email that was sent from the schools?  Yeah, I'd gladly pay that $6. 

Would you?

(These numbers were taken from mill rate calculations on a typical Monroe home with 2000 square feet and 3 bedrooms.  Mill rate calculations of your own can be done by taking your assessment, dividing by 1,000 and multiplying by the proposed mill rates for each referendum.  1st:  30.5, 2nd, 30.46, 3rd, 30.41, 1M reduction, 30.14)