Okay. Good evening everyone and welcome to the Caldwell West Caldwell Board of Education public budget hearing tonight here at James Caldwell High School at 6:00 p.m. in the James Caldwell High School cafeteria. This board of education meeting will be streamed live, but all community questions and comments
will be welcomed here in person. The Caldwell West Cwell Board of Education public budget hearing meeting is complying with the Open Public Meetings Act and NJSA104-6, also known as the Sunshine Law. Notices have been sent to the Progress and Cwell, New Jersey, and the Star Ledger, Newark, New Jersey, as well
as Tap into West Essex. Notices have also been posted at the Board of Education business office located in the Harrison School Building, 104 Grey Street in West Caldwell, and have been delivered to the clerks of the Burrow of Caldwell and the Township of West Caldwell for posting. Brian, can you
take the role, please? Yes. Miss D. Martini here. Miss Lowi Jefferson here. Miss Mack here. Mr. Diamola here. Mroso here. Five voting members present. We have a quorum. Can everyone please rise
for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Brian, are there any communications for the board this evening? There were none. Okay. So, we're going to pass it on to Dr. Conklin for a superintendence report. Um, the only report I have tonight is to introduce the GCMS production of Frozen. and they like to do a short performance for us so we can
uh see what we're going to expect um two weeks from now. Nana nana hey I am nana n hey n Hey
[Music] [Music] la, though [Music]
really want to build a snowman. Build that snowman. Me and you. [Music]
And the story when they were [Music] smaller. Her magic filar.
Watch this. Elsa, no. Magic must stay secret. [Music] Happy shiny [Music] day. All
[Music] right. 1 2 3 together. You kne together. time together at the royal family is ever on
display and the people of the princesses and watch them as they play [Music] my be sure
and let our hearts be warm. Born by this family all the way. Let the sun shine on be strong and let your love be true. We love so
well. We will look to [Music] [Applause] It's coronation day. It's coronation
day. has finally come. I can't believe you're finally opening up the gates and for a whole day. It's coronation day. Princess Anna. [Music]
[Music] But the actual real life people it would be totally strange for the first time forever.
There'll be music for the best time in forever. I'll be dancing through the night. Don't know how [Music]
or forever. I won't be alone. I can't wait to meet everyone. What a [Music] time [Music]
magical super [Music] [Applause] [Music] my
soul. For the first time in forever magic. For the first time in forever, I could always find [Music]
someone for the first time forever at least. [Music] Open. [Music]
It's over today. Is that too late? To open up the gates. The gates. The gates. The
gates. For the first time in forever. Where shine outside. For the first time in forever. The gates are open
wide. I know that all is tomorrow. So has [Music] [Applause] to start forever. [Music]
[Applause] [Applause] Everyone did a wonderful job. Just want to remind everyone watching at
home and who's in the audience tonight for the budget hearing that Frozen is next weekend, May 16th, 17th, and 18th. The 16th. Thank you so much, Miss Em. They were fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Friday night,
May 16th, the show is at um 6:30, I believe. Saturday at 1 PM, Sunday at 1 PM. Tickets are $ five dollar. They are on sale right now available on the district's website. Um it because there's limited shows, we can probably
guarantee it's such a pos uh a popular show. It's going to sell out quickly. Tickets are $5. So buy your tickets in advance and let's support our kids because they've worked so hard and it's going to be pretty wonderful. There's also going to be cast meet and greet after the two matineese on Saturday and
Sunday. So, be a real fun time. They were fantastic. Okay, Dr. Conslin, anything else? That concludes my report. Okay, fantastic. Um, so now we're going to move forward to the budget hearing and we're going to turn it over to Mr. McCarthy, our awesome business
administrator. Okay. Um, thank you again. I'm Brian McCarthy. I'm the school business administrator and board secretary for Call of West Cowwell. And of course, I have a a tough act to follow here. So, I probably won't be as as entertaining as uh as a kids. No, I was I was told I
have no voice. So, the the format I'm presenting is similar to what you've seen the last couple years. I think it's important for continuity. Um so, you'll see some of the slides that look similar, but again, we have some uh some different uh
exciting information. So I always start before I do a budget presentation uh obviously just define what exactly are we putting together here and presenting and a budget is nothing other than a planned um a plan
for expenses and revenue for our 2025 2026 fiscal year um spending at the district. Um, and it again it's in or organized in not in so much a narrative but in in monetary terms because we're talking about largely the revenues and
expenses for the district and how they're allocated to achieve the board's uh mission uh and strategic goals. Again, also it's a living document. It's our best plan. It changes over the year as need, but we try to to
best um um target our revenues and expenses. I thought before we started, it's important to outline some of the challenges that are facing uh not only call West Co, but all New Jersey public schools. And you'll see some of these things outlined in our budget. Uh I
start off with talking about um the statutory cap. So all New Jersey schools, we are limited by a 2% maximum increase in a tax levy every year. Um uh this can be um this can be risen if we
get adjustments for healthc care costs or enrollment adjustments uh by the state. So you can sometimes have slightly higher than 2% the board would have to approve that that additional raise. And then this is sometimes called a bank cap if we don't use it. We do
have some bank cap uh available that will expire next year. Uh we're not planning to use it for this year. So when you have a 2% statutory increase only in revenue, you can see this is an issue because our expenses are largely going up greater than 2%. Our salaries
we've negotiated with teachers and teachers throughout the state are somewhere in the three and a half somewhere even 4% range. And that usually is obviously that's a large part of your cost as a school. In addition, we have health care costs that had been recently rising at 5 to 10%. And this
year we did get hit with a 20% uh hike in gas and utilities. Is is the whole state of New Jersey. You're going to see this at your residential level as well. That's because we don't produce gas or electricity in the state of New Jersey.
I I noted that inflation has come down. We're not the same inflation we had a couple years ago, but I I am concerned. You know, we will see possibly some uh additional costs and supplies and other materials if the tariffs hit. We don't know that, but it's again, it's a risk
for our budget. We do have some slack budgeted in, but that is something that could be a problem not just for Cwell West Cwell, but for actually for consumers and for all New Jersey schools. In addition, we do rely on some federal grants. We have two large
programs. It's IDA, which is an acronym for individual disabilities education act. We get about 600,000 annually from the federal government, and that goes directly as a subsidy in our budget for out of district tuition. And we also get
uh ESA, you know, formerly known as title one funds or uh no ch no child left behind. And that helps subsidize some of our afterchool programs for um for for kids. So, we're aware of this. We do five-year projections. So, this is
not something that's going to strike us as something that's we're um new. But again, uh we form our budget with a forward-looking what happens if we don't make changes uh this year and the and the and the next years. Here we go. All right.
So, what we do streamline, I call it streamlining. So when we build the budget, I call it it's a zerobased budget. So sometimes people ask, why is it different from last year literally we start at zero teachers and and our personnel um they're they're in a
budget. Uh usually we have a raise for them, but they're they're in there. And then everything else we look for needs. So all our administrators will come back and say, "Here's what we need." Some will ask for more, some will ask for less. Um but our budget is built not just rolling up for some type of
percentile increase two to 3% but based on needs. Uh our budget includes no additional staffing. We have actually a one-time um FTE full-time equivalent uh reduction in uh administrative staffing. We have reduction in supply budgets. Uh
we paired back some of our required maintenance and facilities this year. These are things that we have to do uh to achieve a balanced budget. As you can see, 2% revenue, 3 to 4% in expenses. We also have um streamlined or actually
reduced some of our technology spending. Uh we still have a onetoone initiative. So, we're been in good shape for the last couple years and um we haven't had to you'll see the next slide really in in impact instruction. I put this slide in here because the
most important thing obviously for schools is our instructional instructional budget. Again, this is a five-year look. You saw this slide last year, but you can see FY26 for fiscal year 26. We're still trending up for regular program instruction. So, you the
largest we're about over a million dollars higher. That's largely salary for our teachers. We still have a very healthy budget for supplies, uh, textbooks, improve instruction. It's our curriculum instruction. And then for training, we're still maintaining, you
know, over 60 65,000 for staff training. I have it in red. For the last couple years, you saw it where it ballooned up during the uh the uh pandemic. We had additional funding, but we're back to more to levels that we've seen in the past.
This is the budget. So, you've seen this before if you watched us last year. Uh, it is on the left side. It's our our revenues. On the right side, it is our expenses. I like to use colors. Green is revenue. Makes sense. Red is what we're
spending. You can see that our total budget is approximately $61 million. I have to balance the revenue and the and the expenses. On the top left side, you'll see that the largest revenue item we have is the tax levy from the towns of West Call and Cwell. We went up 2%
this year. So, we have roughly a million39,000 of additional revenue from the increase of 2% in the tax levy. The other things we received net about a 100,000 more in state aid. We had about 146 in,000 additional in normal programs
and a program called SEMI which is uh special ed education Medicaid initiative. We're down about 41,000. Uh we also have I put in there about 35,000 additional revenue and transportation fees. We do busing for some of our surrounding neighbor uh neighbor
neighborhood districts and um we piggyback on our out of district when where we can as a shared service and that's additional revenue for the district. So our really our operating budget is 57 million 211. In addition I put in here here's some one-time revenue
items that are in the budget. They bounce off on the expense side. Uh 415,000 plus the 82 is what's called excess surplus. What that means is if we have additional money that is left in surplus from our uh this is from our
last year's budget. We are FY24. We're allowed to bring that money in as a topline revenue item for this budget. I try to keep it around 4 to 500,000 because obviously you can't depend on it. If you have if you have a really tight budget that that there's no
surplus in that money is zero. So we've been doing about 4 to 500,000. It's prudent, but again, these are one-time um one-time revenue items, and they you can't count on them. In addition, we have withdrawals from Cathy Reserve. We have
954,000 in withdrawals that were two projects that are in the budget for the Wilson and Lincoln vestibules. These are the parts, the additions. We have part that was borrowed in the referendum. These are amounts that were outside of the referendum that we plan to put in
this budget to help uh round out the cost for those two projects. Finally, you'll see 3 mill 3,250. This again is a withdrawal from the capital reserve account. It's a one-time payment uh in principle uh for
our borrowing of the 22,875 that we just did. It's going to settle on May 15. And we did that to front-load the principal payments so that our debt service for the taxpayer taxpayers would be the same as what came off last year as we we told
you when we did the referendum. So on the right side and those are our our revenues. On the right side you can see our expenses. You'll notice that the salaries about 34 million 158,000. We're about a million81,000 in additional costs. It
pretty much matches the 2% revenue. So you can see well how do you do that? So if you can only go up a million and you spend a million on salaries that means the other programs we have to tighten the belt and that's what we've done. Fortunately we've done a lot of planning
here in the district and we're at a point where we have a little slack in the budget. We're if you want to use the cliches we've gone to some of the fat. Um we're not in the muscle or the bone right now. some other districts are, but we're really tightening the belt. And
going forward, uh, again, this kind of 2% and three, four, five on the expense is not sustainable, but we're we're we're cognizant in doing all that we can given the structure of public schools in New Jersey. In addition to our operating
budget, this rounds out the other items in our budget. fund 20 are our grants I alluded to before. Uh we have about 720,000 uh between the idea and the uh ESA grants. And then we have what's called the debt service fund. If you look down
below in the purple, you'll see the amounts for debt service for West Cwell and Cwell, they're roughly the same as what happened last year. And that's the res uh result of having that 3,250 payment in um from the capital reserve.
Okay, so our total budget is actually 64,862. If you see the user friendly budget, they have 68 million and change and then you back out that 3,250 because it's a kind of a kink in the software in my opinion.
This is small, but again, if you look at all our expenses, these are the programs. So, of that $65 million, these are the different things that you hear about of what we do. And if you look on the left side of this, uh, it's small here, but there you go. You start off with the regular program, programming,
special education, athletics, all the way down to administration, facilities. These are the expenses that we have for the programs, and these include everything. So, by program, we're talking salaries, uh, purchase services, supplies, etc. And it does foot back
down to the total uh budget I talked to you about. Um so you have comparative between last year and this year. And I'll go over in the next slide some of the big differences where we actually are spending more by program and less by program. And on the bottom uh uh chart
where I I have it bracketed in the in the bold black again you'll see that between the salaries employee benefits if you add them up we're about 80% of our budget. Again, that's very normal for for schools. Labor is our biggest cost, our biggest stakeholders, our
teachers, and um that's where the lion share of our expenses go for personnel. Okay. So, these are the highlights of the programs that I just show talked about in the the prior slide. In this slide here, uh, I
highlighted programs that we have a 100,000 change from the the previous year. The red in this case means we're spending more. And in the green, these are all expenses, means we're spending less. So, if you notice that regular programs instruction, we're up about a
million dollars. That's really all the salaries. uh for special education, we had a decrease uh at at the high school and the middle school uh in um and the need to hire special ed education teachers. And I I'll say that the reason
is I' we've done some analysis because four years ago when I got here, our classification rates were in the low 20s, 20%, which means 20% or greater of your population is classified as needing special education services. Now we're trending down into the high teens. So
it's not that we're cutting the services. It means that there's other supports that have been in place and we are spending less for special education. um the the metric that other schools look at I can say that some of the other districts in the state targeting where
they think they should be and again it just we're looking at average numbers not that we're trying to to target this but if you're around 13 to 14% of your total student population is really want to be if you are running in a completely efficient program for genet and special ed where you think all the supports are
in place but we're moving in the right direction the second thing I you'll notice is that we have a large reduction special education um out of district tuition that goes, you know, that that is that's not necessarily everything we're doing. Sometimes you can have you can have that change just you have a
family comes in, you have two or three kids and 400,000 is not a a big a big number, but we're lower on special education um tuition. We're lower extraordinary services. These are the aids. They go tied to the out of district tuition. These are the aids
that we pay for at other schools if we had the tuition. We also have a a line where we pay for the the aids that help the children at these at these programs. Child study team, we're actually spending a little more. We've done a lot more in-house for OT. Um you know, OT
and PT, physical therapy and o occupational therapy. Those are the acronyms. Uh improve instruction. Uh we actually were down a little of in the curriculum instruction. This is tied to uh I think a administrative position reduction. central services 200,000 is
less spending. That's the central office including my business office. And that's because we had a an item that was really a district-wide expense that was budgeted in the in the business office and I moved it to be district-wide as in the correct placement. Transportation,
we have a large increase in transportation costs. And this is largely because it hadn't been really correctly, you know, it's we we had a change in command with our transportation last year. Someone left and we we we really looked at it and we
are properly budgeting for added district um for so we have sometimes that we can't bust in house. We will hire uh for instance sus cooperative and they bust for us. We also have more expense for transportation repairs and for some of our salary because uh it's
very hard to keep drivers and aids and you have to you have to pay them to keep them here. So, we're not the highest in in the area, but we're certainly no longer the lowest and we've had better retention and and honestly the the programs is running much better. Finally, uh you'll see that we
have higher costs for the health benefits. told you last year, fortunately, I I I budgeted pretty aggressively for the health benefit increases. It came in even high. It came in higher than what I uh actually slightly lower than what I budgeted, but
between that increase uh and uh what I budgeted this year, we're only at 200,000 yearoveryear in the budget. So, that that kind of worked out. Highlights. This is highlights from this year's budget of things that we've done. Again, these are these are the numbers. Uh not necessarily the
narrative of of the of the instructional things we've done, but we've we repaved the parking lot at Harrison. Uh we did some of the brickmasonry and waterproofing repairs at Grover Cleveland. Additional money is in the budget, excuse me, in the referendum for larger repairs at at the middle school.
But this is something that was um it was critical to get done right now. We replace hot water heaters at the high school. We replaced uh boilers at um also at the high school Lincoln school in Harrison. And if you notice at the last time uh we had the board meeting at
Jefferson, we fixed the lights in the gym because I couldn't read we couldn't it was dark. So I think that's an improvement there. In additional uh again we also you know we we had additional purchase of of Chromebooks and Prometheian boards this year as
well. for the upcoming budget. Um, these are things that are going on. As you know, we are actively uh working on the new plans or the final plans for the referendum. We did sell
20-year bonds uh at at a 3.97 net interest cost the bond settle on May 15th. I was pleased about that that sale and we should be going out to you know bid on least uh on we're going to we are going to um prioritize the projects by
uh by health and safety need and then go out one at a time and hopefully if the world settles down the bids will come in at a reasonable cost. That's what we're hoping. In addition, we do have plans. I think uh the board president mentioned last week we're going to we're going to
working on plans for a a scaleown version of the uh fieldhouse. Uh we think we're targeting $8 million and I believe the architect is going to be coming here on May 19th to talk more about that. Uh give a a description of what we're
doing in our in our budget. We continue not only instruction, we continue to support the arts. So the budgets are still very healthy uh for our music uh and arts and we continue to have in the budget uh the device and the monies to continue our onetoone effort for our
devices for the students. These are the tax levies. These are actual numbers uh the dollars that we are going to be uh charging uh the town. So if you look on the top
there you see F2Y 25 and 26. Our total tax levy for 26 is 53 million24 457 that is for the operating budget. We are only going to charge a million not only a million 920427 for
our debt service. Uh so the total tax for the towns is 54,944884. You can see on the top part here, the general fund. That's a 2% increase. These splits are estimated because I'm still working with the the
county uh tax department. It's roughly 2/3 one-third split. Twothirds for West Cwell and one-third for Cwell, but you can understand on billions of dollars, a couple significant digits change numbers, but those are roughly the numbers that you'll see in your
taxes. So, we're 2%. the the tax levy is only up a quarter of 1% and we're slightly under 2% for just total school tax uh as far as increase uh this year in this budget. These are the estimated tax
rates with debt service. You can see that uh we're actually lower uh as they stand right now with these tax rates. We're going to see a slight decrease in taxes. It has to do with uh the taxable base going higher. But we should see for
for Cwell the change is uh 33. This is per thousand. And then for West Call of 3670 and these are the numbers that we we we sent out notice to the town. It's called a form A4F. And again, these are estimated, but they should be very close
to what the county signs off uh when they they come back to me hopefully this week. So if you have a 100,000 assessed value for Cwell, you're down roughly $33 per 100,000. So if you're a 500,000 assessed
home, it's about $150 lower tax uh bill this year for the school tax. Uh for for West Cwell, you're about$170 $180 less than last year. I think we just lost that screen here.
So that's my presentation. Uh uh we have time for questions and and uh from the audience if Thank you very much. Thanks Brian. Brian, do you want to stay up there and answer questions? Does anyone have any questions on the proposed budget for
Brian? Okay. Can you just You got to go to the mic. Sorry. No one at home can hear you. I apologize. here. Okay. Good evening. Matt MCI, 39 Forest Avenue. U regarding the 8 million going
to the new fieldhouse that's being presented in a couple weeks. In the previous uh proposal when it was 15 and change, the board was going to contribute about 2 million out of the capital reserves. What are we doing? Are we going to contribute the same? If not, what's going to happen with the 2 million that was going to be used for
the previous building? So this plan we are not planning to use it in the capital reserve. So it's going to be an $8 million borrowing. Uh last time it was approximately 15.42 million going in from capital reserve and it would have been a 13.4
million borrowing. This one is a smaller plan 8 million. We're trying we're going to hope to bond the entire project. Okay. So what happens to the other $2 million? It's available for other projects. You know it's like money. It's a special restricted reserve that can be used for other capital projects in the
district. Could you provide some examples of what those other projects I mean don't I mean just ballpark right now we don't have other projects targeted but it's like many schools like to have capital reserve and main reserve funds available because we don't know if
if a roof goes and caves then we have to put a roof on. So if you have nothing then you don't have the ability to to for large projects. So that I I we don't have a plan for this. So nothing to your marked. Does that sit in an interest bearing account? Just rolls if we need it. I'm sorry. Does it sit in an
interest bearing account? Yes. Okay. Yes, it's a special account. We get interest on it and absolutely. Cool. Thanks. Sure. Anyone else? Okay. Um we have to do public comment. So we'll open that up right there. Yep. So
we're going to open up the public comment portion of the meeting. Again, this is just a special budget meeting. So we'll do public comment then we'll vote the budget in and then we will adjourn. Um so public participation shall be governed by the following. Participant must be recognized by the
presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of their name and address. Statements are to be limited to three minutes duration and may only address items on the agenda. Participant may speak no more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard. All statements shall be directed
to the presiding officer. Boards use the public comment period of the meeting as an opportunity to listen to citizen concerns, but not to debate issues or enter into a question and answer session or cross-examination between the public and individual members. Please be aware that not all is all issues brought before the board will be resolved this
evening. Boards may respond to public comment by seeking additional information or by delegating the authority to investigate the issue to the superintendent or his designate. The presiding officer may interrupt, warn, and or terminate a participant's comments if they exceed the allotted time or are objectively obscene.
Participants may be civily liable for any obscene, defamatory, or slander statements made during public comment. Would anyone like to get up to address the board this evening? No. Okay. So, we'll close public
comment. And now um we're going to move for the adoption of the 2025 2026 budget. Danielle, I'll ask you to read the resolution, please, for finance and facilities. Yeah. Yep. Resolve that the call west call board of education in the county of Essex approves the submission
of the tentative 2025 2026 school district budget to the Essex County Superintendent of Schools. This budget meets the requirements for providing the New Jersey student learning standards and consists of appropriations as follows. And do you want me to read throughout
this? Um, I would just read the first line. The total expenditures general fund special. Okay. The total expenditures for 2526 general fund is 61,914,252. Special revenues 721,89. debt service 5,476,725 for a total of 68,112,66
and then I would just say total expenditures less 3.2 transfer of capital reserve okay 2025 2026 total expenditures net of 3,250,000 uh transfer and then the total being
64,862,66 Brian, is that good enough? Do we have to read the entire thing and keep going? That's fine. Okay, great. Okay, do I have a second, please? All right, we'll second. Great. And then Brian, if you could please take the role. Yes. Miss D. Martini. Yes. Malf.
Yes. M. Yes. Mr. Dbola? Yes. Roso. Um, I'm going to vote yes, but before I do, I just want to close by, but on behalf of the board, Brian would just like to thank you and Dr. Conklin for your efforts with balancing the budget. Um, just so people know, there were very,
very minor cuts made in the budget. No cuts to curricular instruction or to staffing um, at the building levels, which is very, very important. Um, and we have asked for a five-year projection. I mean, there's districts around us that are folding left and
right. The state is coming in. Their budgets are millions and millions in the red. We are not. And I'm very very proud to be part of a group of individuals who are so fiscally responsible with our tax dollars and very grateful again to the both of you for helping us to make this
happen for next school year. So my vote is yes as well. Okay. 5. Motion carried. Great. Um before I make a motion ask for a motion to enter into executive I'd like to just remind everyone that our next public
meeting is May 19th. It will happen here at the James Cobell High School cafeteria. At that meeting, two very important things are going to happen. That meeting is going to begin at 5:30m. From approximately 5:30 till 7 o'clock, give or take. We will have the introduction of our new interim
superintendent. Um the new superintendent is Dr. Lydia Fernari. Um she's a resident here in West Caldwell and she will be with us for this school year. Um we will also be having our architect Greg Sanjen coming to to uh
reveal the plans for the new fieldhouse that will be on the ballot at the November election. So, anyone watching at home, we have a small group here, but anyone watching at home, please come. Like I said, we're giving a full hour and a half for people to come come from work and have a chance to meet Dr.
Fenari. I will introduce her. She'll say a few words and then we'll probably get into a less like informal where people can come up, shake her hand, meet her, um, and welcome her into the district. Okay. Um, can I have a motion to enter into executive session?
We're closed. Yeah. Do I have a motion to enter into executive session at 6:43 p.m.? I'll make a motion. And can I have a second? Second. All uh Brian, you could take the role. All in favor? I I. All against nay. Any extensions? Motion
carried. Great. Thank you so much everyone. We'll see you on the 19th. Not like if you want to approach one of us, you can.