Why Won’t The Bernards Board Provide the School Budget Detail?

A letter submitted by Basking Ridge resident Cody Smith:

I reviewed the Bernards Township School District’s budget for the first time this year, and quite frankly, I was surprised at the lack of transparency with the public who is largely paying the tab.

Perhaps, mistakenly, I look to our Bernards Township Committee as a model for transparency and
communication and expected the same from our school district. As a reminder, the township asked us to fund about $24 million of its budget and our school district asked for $91 million.

For the April 26 Bernards Township Committee meeting that included the municipal budget
introduction, the township provided the chief financial officer’s presentation and nine pages of
supplemental, detailed financial information for public review five days before that meeting as part of the meeting’s published agenda. Our school district provided nothing in advance of its budget introduction on March 28.

A few weeks before the scheduled public hearing to approve the budget, I requested additional budget information from our school district’s business administrator. I was trying to compare the district’s proposed budget to previous years’ more detailed actual spending found in the district’s audited financial statements, which coincidently are not on the district’s website. Unlike my helpful question-and-answer email exchange with our township’s CFO regarding the township’s municipal budget, the school district’s administrative staff sent me an email, crafted by a lawyer, giving reasons why none of the information I requested would be produced.

Four days before Monday night’s school board meeting, the district did publish its advertised budget comprised of high-level budget subtotals in the Bernardsville News, as required by law.

With a normally-sized font, the advertised budget would fit on two or three 8.5” by 11” sheets of paper. No other information was supplied in advance of Monday night’s vote. By comparison, five days before the Township Committee’s formal vote to approve the municipal budget, the public had access to the CFO’s presentation scheduled for that evening and more than 20 pages of supplemental financial disclosure.

The week prior to the district’s vote, in anticipation of the advertised budget being published, I filed a formal Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request asking for the more detailed budget information supporting the Advertised Budget that is supplied to the school board’s finance committee. New Jersey statute requires the agency receiving an OPRA request to respond as soon as possible, but in no event later than seven business days after receiving the request. A few hours before the statutory deadline, days after public comment on the district’s budget closed, I received a one-page legal form letter denying my request as “vague, ambiguous, overly broad and does not name specifically identifiable documents” and because it “seeks advisory, consultative and deliberate information which is not subject to disclosure.”

But probably the most disheartening action that occurred at Monday night’s meeting was a Board
member, who is a CPA but surprisingly not on the board’s finance committee, voting “no” for budget approval. Her reasoning, in part, was that she could not obtain the necessary detail behind the numbers to cast an informed "yes" vote.

We are in unprecedented times with rising inflation and a looming recession. As New Jersey
homeowners, we already pay the highest property taxes in the country. Yet even with declining
enrolment, our taxes and our school district’s spending overall and on a per-student basis keeps rising.

We have every right to know the details about where our money is being spent and our school district’s plan to keep taxes below the two percent cap in the future. Why not tell us?