Revised Tentative Eatontown School Budget Up Half a Percent From Last Year

The Eatontown Board of Education introduced a revised tentative budget for the 2011-2012 school year at their March 14 meeting that reflects recent increases in state aid.

According to School Superintendent Scott McCue, the $3.4 million aid from the state was “slightly increased” from last year, helping to offset the $20.5 million budget that is up less that 1 percent from 2010-2011.

“This is probably one of the few years, in the last five or six years, that there’s been good news,” said Interim Business Administrator Charles Shay of the 1 percent increase to aid from the state for next year.

The district received $141,429 through the Education Jobs Fund, a federal program to help districts create and save teachers on a yearly basis. That aid helped save three positions in the district that had been eliminated in the originally introduced tentative budget, said Shay. All staffing and services will be maintained under the revised tentative budget, he added.

“The Jobs Fund is meant to save jobs and that’s exactly what it did,” said Shay.

The portion of the budget to be raised through the local tax level is $13.14 million, which is a .5 percent increase from 2010-2011. Recently passed state legislation mandated a 2 percent cap on the amount of property taxes used to fund the budget.

The tax levy will cost the owner of the averaged assessed home in Eatontown of $310,000 about $267 for the year. That is a $23.61 increase over last year or $1.97 a month, according to Shay.

“If that isn’t a sigh of relief for tax payers, I don’t know what is,” said Shay.