Brick School Board Trims Tax Increase In 2017-18 Budget

BRICK, NJ — Brick Township taxpayers will see a small increase in their property taxes after the Board of Education approved a trimmed-down $154 million budget for the 2017-18 school year Thursday night.

The $154,421,700 budget includes a tax levy of $104,771,941, a 1.22 percent increase over the 2016-17 budget, Business Administrator James Edwards said. The increase amounts to $30.83 for the year for a home assessed at the township average of $293,600, he said. The finalied budget reflects a decrease of $756,500 from the initially proposed tax levy of $105,528,441.

While the tax levy was reduced, the district is moving forward with several capital projects that the board and adminstration consider to be critcal needs, including the replacement of the roof at Warren H. Wolf Elementary School, the replacement of the track at Brick Township High School, and the parking lot project at the Veterans Memorial complex. Those projects and several smaller ones, including the replacement of a broken bifold door at Emma Havens Young Elementary School that has been deemed a safety issue, are being funded through capital reserve, with an estimated $3.1 million expected to be spent on those items, Edwards said.

The budget includes the hiring of an integrated STEM Academy teacher so that Brick Memorial and Brick Township High School will each have one; an additional American Sign Language instructor to meet demand for the classes because the two high schools currently share one, and a dance teacher to be shared by the two high schools to meet a state curriculum mandate.

Susan McNamara, the district's director of curriculum and instruction, has said a state mandate requires schools to provide instruction in four disciplines in the arts, and dance was the one area Brick was lacking. Curriculum issues were an area state education department officials said need to be addressed during the district's most recent QSAC review, she said.

The budget also includes the replacement of five school buses that have reached their allowable lifespan under state regulations. Donald Wilson, director of transportation, said at the April 6 meeting that the recommendation he was making was to purchase buses with a 15-year lifespan, because they were about $40,000 less expensive and the 20-year buses typically reach the end of their useful life at about 15 years.

Edwards said Thursday the district initially planned to purchase the new buses outright, but decided to instead go with a lease-purchase that will save $350,000 in the 2017-18 budget.

Edwards said the district also is seeing reductions in medical claims of $279,315 and a whopping $772,046 in its prescription claims, based on estimates from its insurance broker, as well as a reduction in the estimate for substitute teachers of more than $200,000 due to better attendance in 2016-17, he said.

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