Council to Talk School Budget in Private

School budget talk is about to get serious—if it hadn't already.

Hopatcong's council will meet in a closed-door session for preliminary discussions on the school district's failed school budget at borough hall at 8 p.m.

It'll be the second time borough leaders talked about the budget, which and would have . Mayor Sylvia Petillo said the council discussed the budget in executive session before Wednesday's meeting.

The council can decide to cut the budget or leave it alone. But on Wednesday Petillo a budget escaping council cuts after it had been defeated. Hopatcong's Board of Education must accept the dollar amount the council says to cut, but it can cut wherever it wants from the budget.

Petillo said the next step could be for the council's finance committee to meet with the school board to discuss the budget in private. Petillo said she didn't know if there would be an open-to-public meeting between the school board and the council to talk about the budget because it could become "very adversarial very quick."

"So, the past couple of years, because of the impact of these cuts and because of the difficult economic situation and the reduction of teachers, we've been doing committee meetings so we can spend two or three hours together and we can get a better understanding of what the budget is about," Petillo said. "But I don't know whether it will be closed or if it will be open or if it will be both."

Last year, the council slashed $730,000 from the proposed budget. That, coupled with a $1.7 million loss in state aid, resulted in 24.5 teacher cuts and a bunch of program eliminations.