[Music] to order for the
flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all this meeting is in compliance with the open public meeting law and has been
duly advertised in the newspaper as an official meeting i don't need a motion right mr rooff Dr osman here mr walsh here mr mccarron here mrs rivera present mrs baroas
present mrs gardella present mrs cass present i need a motion for approval of the agenda motion second discussion with the addition that that I'm about to read so maybe I should read the uh addition to the agenda okay there's an addition to
the agenda and this is going to replace finance number one whereas in the proposed fiscal year 2026 state budget certain districts have the opportunity to apply to the commissioner
of education to increase expenditures including an allocation of tax levy incentive aid in order to satisfy the thoroughess and efficiency standards established pursuant to NJSA187F-46 and whereas the Jackson School District is below local fair
share and spending below adequacy to be eligible to participate in this program and whereas the Jackson School District is eligible to increase expenditures by up to 32,473,000 and 66 and $687 to qualify for tax levy incentive aid in the amount
of up to $1 million and whereas the Jackson School Board of Education hereby declines to submit an application to increase the tax levy beyond that which was already approved by the Board of Education at our preliminary budget meeting because the
board does not wish to tax its already overtaxed constituents now therefore be it resolved that the board hereby declines to submit an application to the state because this board has taken all reasonable steps to provide a thorough and thorough and efficient education to
its students with no help from the Department of Education and a funding formula that has irreparably harmed the Jackson School District and be it finally resolved that a copy of this resolution shall be sent to our local legislators the New Jersey School Boards
Association the Commissioner of Education and Governor Murphy yeah so that's going to be the Now we're going to vote okay so now we're going to vote to approve the agenda with that uh addition on there and then ultimately we'll vote on that resolution separately
so now we're just voting to approve the agenda with the addition of that resolution okay so this is just the agenda so discussion on the agenda roll call dr osman yes mr walsh yes mr
mccarron yes mrs rivera yes mrs baroas yes mrs gardella yes mrs cass yes superintendence report as this is a special meeting this night uh this evening for this tax incentive decision by the board I have no report
miss Castle I'll turn it right back to you i need a motion to public open public forum second please sign in and state your name and whether or not you are a Jackson resident each person is allowed a maximum of three minutes to speak no
person may speak more than once on the topic until all others have been heard seeing no one come forward I need a motion to close public forum second i I need a motion to move finance
second discussion i'm sure there's a lot discussion yeah I have a discussion i think that um you know Jackson's been taxed in a lot of different ways right monetarily
we had a 9.9 tax increase last year our community was taxed through reconsolidation and reconfiguration and through that time I don't personally feel that the state has come forward like if this resolution said something
like they were going to help us with some of our expenses right that are out of our control they're state mandates then maybe we could say "Yeah okay we'll meet you somewhere on that but we're not it's not written that way it's it's basically to say we'll bring you up to
adequacy well guess what we could raise our taxes up that much and we have expenses that aren't going to maintain us you know if we do that and I think that's the the missing piece here that for some reason you know there's a lot
of legislators that are around and there's only uh maybe one or two who are paying attention to that fact and all these legislators our tax dollars are paying for their salaries including everybody who's auditing all of our financials over the past two years right
we're all paying for that service and here we are talking about the same thing we could raise our taxes i thought this was a kind of like a joke i just want someone to pay attention to us i didn't realize you could only go as high as your adequacy number i would have said 300% you know why cuz this idea of
raising taxes is nonsense and in Jackson we need someone to come in and say "Where's the legislative pieces that are going to help us with all the expenses that are again out of our control it's you know no one can control that these are state mandates
that we have to pay and we can raise our tax levy every year." And there's actually a great video that I found that talks about this for districts who have very high state mandates in in MLL in special education and in transportation
if it's exceeding a certain dollar amount going up to adequacy is not going to solve your problem in sustainability so you know I'm glad that we made that resolution and we weren't just silent about not raising a tax levy at all you know we need to say something
um I don't know if this is my board comment or what but this is my discussion anyone else adequacy uh I've seen the numbers and where they come from and they make no sense they use uh the evaluation of your
salaries the average salary but they use years 22 23 and 24 and they also multiply it in there by the value of your homes but they use year 20 21 and 22 there's no match i
don't know where the state's coming up with this adequacy okay i think somebody should look into how they formulated this adequacy yeah okay i'll go next um so when I heard about this tax potential tax
increase I thought it was bananas and kind of lost my mind and so although I know the people on the board very much know my position here and I'm glad that they did agree and said we're not doing this i did put thoughts down when I was trying to figure this all out and
looking at the map and so that the public understands where I'm coming from i'm going to read my thoughts to you all right so in my opinion we couldn't accept the proposed tax levy uh incentive program um we must also reject any tax increase that's higher than the
tentative budget our community already expects from us our job as board members being people who were voted in by our community is to protect Jackson um citizens and defend our rights to make local decisions without state interference so to me the idea of
another tax increase after the previous 9.9% increase that the state called this one-time deal is unacceptable and yes I get that this is a new round of taxes but this breaks the public's trust i mean it broke my own trust right i'm on
the on the board and it goes against responsible responsible local control so I think we need to remember why the CAP exists in the first place and you know I asked this question to people on this board and I'm glad I understand it but the tax cap was created to stop school
board members just regular people like ourselves from you know putting too much of a tax burden on the community right i'm not a finance person so I don't feel comfortable even doing that it's a safety measure against financial
irresponsibility and it gives the taxpayers some idea of stability so our current problem is that the state just doesn't share the money fairly that we do contribute so in my opinion the previous 9.9% increase has already kind
of hurt our credibility and any more increases especially numbers in the upper 20% range will really come across like we don't care about our community that the people who trusted in us were were you know why did they trust in us and I don't feel comfortable doing that
so I'll say it again for the people in the back the real problem is the state's unfair funding formula and it's wrong and um again as a BOE member I believe it in my opinion we need to reject any temporary fixes and false promises and
that's exactly what this is so the tax levy incentive program to me is a clear attempt to hide the state's failure with short-term unsustainable measures and what I would argue are false incentives we can't keep relying on land sales and
one-time bailouts it doesn't work we are a district where our transportation um expenses are just going to keep going up up up and up right that the makeup of our community is changing and there are laws and people have rights to get
certain funds and you know and until they fix that we're we're never going to you'll make adequacy for a minute and the next minute you're not going to be making adequacy again so to me these are just very shortterm false promise kinds
of proposals so again we're elected to make decisions that are are in our community's best interest and I'm very proud of our board right now for standing up for this because it's a short-term band-aid fix and the state
really needs to think how are they going to help us sustain long-term understanding as our superintendent has said till she's blue in the face that we are a unique district we have a unique population of people who live in this town our needs are not the same as every
other town and it's like we keep saying it to everyone that we could say it to and they're not getting it so to just keep raising dollars and then no it's not really helping just doesn't seem right to me it's just a discussion you can say
whatever you want right so having much time to look at everything we've that's been um put on the table I I came up the other day i I thought to myself this would be a great
question on the SAT in 2010 it was signed into law a 2% tax cap plus in 2018 it was signed into law S2 funding
that would cut your school funding with and then add into that the variable of increasing non-public transportation increasing multil- language learners increasing special education in and sorry and add to that
inflation and then get to act adequacy riddle tell me that hello um okay i was just going to say I mean listen I remember and I remember this at um the convention in Atlantic City and I remember it on TV i
remember the governor and the commissioner both claiming and actually boasting that all districts were fully funded does everybody remember that they were fully funded i don't know how we're here now cuz Lacy Tom's River Asber Park
Middletown US i don't know if everybody was fully funded why would they have to raise their taxes to bring themselves to adequacy um as Ally pointed out I mean listen we have a rising you know non-public population we have a rising
ML population and we have a rising special needs population those populations create substantial statemandated budget expenses so when your non-public budget expenses supersede your public funding you're
never going to get to adequacy you're going to keep falling behind and behind and that's what's happening so unless they change this formula and we're just going to keep falling the other side is they wanted us to raise your taxes for the mistakes that they made but then go back to the
2% when our non-public increases more than 2% annually so again we we we could raise your taxes hurt your pocketbook but you'd be back here it doesn't matter because all those expenses are going to keep increasing and we're going to be in
the same place we're never going to get ahead um it's just frustrating i have to tell you like we've all we've all been really stressed um we all really respect each other up here we have different opinions um we don't always agree on
everything i think on this you know we sort of came together um it's hard i I know that everybody thinks that we sit up here and we just I don't know make these decisions willy-nilly or you know we've
been told we've ruined the town we've been told a multitude of things we get emails we get dirty looks we get all kinds of things it's not easy and I'm I mean everybody was emotional in executive session um I'm always emotional so here
I go again but um look this has been hard i don't see a lot of people putting their name on the ballot we're who you elected and we're doing the best we all have vested interests we all live in this town all of our kids are either currently in this school or have
recently graduated so when we make these decisions we don't make them lightly so it's really frustrating sometimes to get those emails or to get those looks to be treated less than because you didn't
agree um but again you don't see all the things that we see you don't see every spreadsheet we see you don't see that we approved a budget and nine days later the state comes in and says "Oh guess what we got this incentive for you you
can raise your taxes 28% to bring yourself to adequacy and we'll give you a million dollars if you do it." Yeah there's a little bonus if we raise your taxes 28% so all I'm trying to say is you don't all see what we see
every little micro piece that we see we give as much to you in the public as we can and we try really hard but you need to understand that um so anyway the last thing I want to say is that our students are not only Jackson students but they're New Jersey students and so I
feel like our governor and our commissioner need to recognize us as students of this state not students of this town and I think that we need people to realize like you you know this decision is not going to make it easier
for us right we're taking a stand hoping that the state's going to listen so we need to get together okay and we need to start to make a little noise instead of at one another to the people who can actually
make a change and you know that's why we did this you know to be honest like I have a 10-year-old accessing the schools like I want them to have a good you know them to have a good education like I part of me sees the value of being able to have the money right but it's the
purpose that it's not going to solve the problem no one is looking at the problem and saying "Hey you know we recognize this and we want to help you." So that you're not taking from one pocket to put into another pocket or you know you're taking and then it's only going to
sustain you one year but recognize that this is going to be hard for us you know this decision was one to stand up and then we're hoping that everybody else stands up too you know we have a lot of staff members that should be standing up every day and parents
and you know again when I heard this I said "Man they're giving us court blanch this sounds like a joke right i just want someone to pay attention no one's going to pay attention if we just said nothing
right but look at our audience i mean we're more people up here that are required to be here than not you know i know I hope there's a lot of people listening but you have to stand up and say what's right and that's what
we have to do you know Middletown did that and they I mean they got laws right now going to benefit them yeah they got Channel 7 News california knows about them you know they're in a position we were in probably three or four years ago right raising a tax levy a little bit at that
point would have helped us right we went out for a vote for 4% we're well beyond that and no one is paying attention so you guys are we've actually asked I mean I know Mrs poor Milly has asked I don't know how many times the
commissioner to come we've invited him we've invited the governor we've invited the commissioner the commissioner actually hides from her at meetings just so you know he kind of right kind of doesn't want to really pay attention to us we've actually had Carol Mrs morris's boss came she came and looked she saw
she looked at everything crickets nobody wants to address Jackson we don't know why we know that there's a big problem we just stated all of our problems we didn't create them the state took away our funding we have extra budget expenses that are not our
problem they're not our fault there's statemandated issues that we're required to pay and so and we're already paying income tax and that's if we weren't paying income tax I would easily do this so you understand that right but we're paying a
ton in income tax and we're not getting any of it back we're only No no no no no income tax goes for state funding our state funding is 15% 75% locally funded they want us to raise it another 28% which puts them down to 5% state funding and according to our
legislator who likes to give us a lot of numbers we're paying $75 million in income tax out of Jackson New Jersey and we realizing what 20 million of it i mean you know in the end we would if we if we got 35 more we would still be able to give other districts that are looking
for money money a,000% i've been saying this for so long right so you you're paying 70 million you're getting about 22 million back and yes I know you have to send you know you you send it to the to the state the state gets to allocate
it as they see there are some things that they have to do right you have other districts in need that don't have a tax base that gets some of that money right but you're the ones paying it and you're not even up to adequacy right
that's crazy to me that's insane yeah but what about what did we say before so they're giving you a million dollar incentive if you do this tax program 300 districts did we say are doing it so how so that's eligible are eligible so if they all apply do the math so you can't
give us any money but you're going to give everybody a million dollars all throughout the state if they if they raise their taxes so think about that they want us to raise your tax that they've already taxed you they took your money newert had said parties like we we
all know what's going on so they're going to give all these districts a million dollar incentive and we're asking for h how much have we asked for we you know I mean seriously and they can't help us out ever we you know we get no but other districts obviously get
what they want and I think everybody has to understand you know we're Listen I ran down our our district organizational chart right i I I put everybody through the ringer and I said "Who are we cutting?" Right listen we've cut the
fact is we're cut we're still 75 or whatever 100 students it's still a lot of kids you know you It's very easy to say "Cut that person what's it saving you?" We are very behind the eightball and believe me I just went down every single
possible position the board could sit here and tell you i compared us to Brick Township right they got 10,000 more students than us and their organizational chart is very non-transparent they don't list out how many supervisors they have they just say academic supervisors well guess what
folks that could be one or it could be 10 right we list out everybody so we look like we have more we are down to the bottom the people now need to get up and say something this board's been saying something we've tried our best to
say something and we can't say anything right you know I thought it would be a joke again i'm I'm going to say it again a joke to say i'll go up to 300% right someone will pay attention what's Jackson doing stand up you know you're just a few here in the room but you know
maybe you got neighbors and you could go rally them together but someone's got to say something and one of the things that are is a little bit mind-boggling is that you would think you would learn from you know things that have happened in the past and so we just happen to be the neighbor where things aren't great
in the public schools right but we're not allowed to speak about anyone else so we're not even learning the lessons from like what happened somewhere else and the state doesn't look at what happened somewhere else instead of how could we make this right how could we look at income tax how could we allocate
a little bit more fairly it's really mind-boggling it's almost like the state is completely against us and doesn't want us to be able to dig out of this hole and you wonder why right because there's enough money I in my opinion there is enough money that they are collecting throughout New Jersey to take care of
all of their school districts and it's like you're watching the destruction of public education how long can that go on it's not you know it's not just Jackson who's having challenges there's just so many schools that are under adequacy and
the state is literally doing nothing and I think people really have to as Megan said like stand up think about things be an informed voter and you really have to you know make a change next time you go to those voting booths because this is
this is ridiculous this is truly bananas roll call dr osman voting on the resolution we never voted we had the resolution that we're not the resolution mark so when I if I vote yes I'm saying we're not doing anything we're just sending that in then I am voting yes
mr walsh yes mr mccarron yes mrs rivera yes mrs baroas yes mrs gardella yes mrs cass yes any other board comments i think we've given you a lot of
information i need a motion to adjourn motion all in favor or by acclamation