I'd like to call this meeting to order notices oh excuse me all right the dentist last man that got me good notice this meeting were posted on the carer post Clerk of attachment District website and members of the Board of Education and posted in the Board of Education off 17 aiel Road Blenheim New Jersey please note this meeting May Be video or audio tape every please rise for the flag salute I pledge alleg to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all may I have a roll call please Mrs here M here m g here M here M here here Mr Johnson is not here Mr oonn herea here Mr Mark here at this time we'll turn the meeting over to our business administrator Mr Mari hello hello um the presentation was uh given to the board and it's also out for the public um tonight's presentation hold on one second here is on the 20 24 2025 budget um this is how the presentation is organized for people who are at home who are going to watch it and and on the slideshow for you uh enrollments by grade level and by school revenues by category uh select appropriation categories uh tax liary information and highlights that are included in the budget so you're going to see two things from R by by uh you're going to see it by school and then by grade level so this is this is as of April 1st I think I put it on the next slide so as of April 1st this was what each school had for enrollment and then by grade level this is what it looks like on the revenue side I gave you three years and these three years or what's in the budget that gets sent up to Trenton uh there's tax Lev information miscellaneous Revenue uh state aid um tuition semi which is uh it's for uh special education gets reimbursed by the the federal government uh capital reserve you can see uh in this year there's a lot more capital reserve being used and we'll get into that a little later and you probably all know you voted on a couple times already uh restricted reserve and other other goes up and down and mainly these two things and you'll see this number will change significantly next next year um these are encumbrances from prior years that that happens in the audit and you can see that the budget is actually up significantly but when you look it's really up I mean it's really up due to cap reserve and that's not entirely why it's up we'll know on some of the Appropriations later as to where some of certain things are but it's definitely up uh this is basically a graph of what you just looked at you can see that state a is this number tax levies this number and then all the other numbers mixed them between so really really two sources of income state aid and tax levy these are a select Appropriations that I picked out regular programs or all programs um uh KD special ed programs are exactly what that means or special ed programs by classified um all academic Support Services what does that mean that's the nurse that's the librarian um that's uh the child study team um guidance that's all in academic Support Services tuition placements this is what I wanted to note for you and I want to give you a reason as to why you're seeing it start to go up a lot right now um the placements that are going out are going out to private schools for the disabled and their fees are going up up and up um the real reason is we you know since 2020 when we had the when we had all the covid money that's come in all that money this year's gone so we basically had four years worth of covid money so we kind of relied on that for four years I mean I think this year alone probably 1.5 or $1.7 million of this money was in that but now it's coming back to you we have to actually pay for it from our actual budget we don't actually don't get to like shift it off to a grant which is what that was it was Federal money so we actually had to budget in I don't think you're going to see these type of increases in Prior years because now the budget is whole after four years of relying on all that covid money the budget is actually whole now we're not relying on on those the federal grants so you shouldn't see big numbers change in future years I mean you're going to see increases but not big increases uh facility maintenance Transportation uh employee benefits now this this actually this number is actually up a lot higher than this um because you have to remember we have uh preschool which is not part in this um we have our fund 71 which is our transportation fund 61 which is our cafeteria they're all in different funds but a lot of them get benefits so this number is actually High higher than that number so this is really our fund 10 budget fund 71 is is a is a a a larger number I mean uh I want to say the preschool grants about uh $6 million so that that's in there so this numberers actually higher it's it only shows like a $900,000 increase but you can almost almost double that um schf and technology which actually went down extracurricular Sports kind of the same Capital Outlet when we say Capital Outlet we're talking about pickup trucks all technology that Steve uses um all the stuff to maintain the schools lawnmowers things like that that's all in technology a lot of that number is basically um um computers to run the district on Steve's side uh cap reserve and we we noted that earlier we we approved this uh I mean you approve approved it a year ago the state approved it in December and then we approved it um to actually spend this money in cap Reserve you're going to see another notation about cap reserve a little bit later others um interest that you get from the bank things like that uh rent all the facilities I mean that's really what other is this is what you just looked at in a uh in a little diagram some people like numbers some people like graphs I did both no that's in cap that's in capital outlay in capital outlays like trucks that kind of thing like Steve's stuff like his switches I mean they're like like $10,000 these switches that run the you know run the district technology no it's in capital outlay that is like computers are in regular technology when you're purchasing anything that's over $2,000 it's in capital Outlet tax labor information I got the three years listed here uh to show you um there is an increase in the tax levy this year um the average home value is up just a a little bit uh 189 270 um the local tax rate is up it's about uh I think it's 1.2% this year um it actually means on a person with the actual assessed value a $398 increase I have another graph on the on the next page to show you that but if you if you look at the previous years it's actually gone down so I mean we asking for $39 more from the average taxpayer but in the previous years it actually went down $22 so got to take the es and the flows a little bit more about the tax levy so this is the average home this is if you have a house that's 150% and this is if you're double so double would be like three you know if you have an average house of 378,000 so this is what it would cost you per month um basically a cup of coffee I would imagine it's actually it's about a $1.2 million is what it actually comes out to be for tax levy a budget to highlights that are in the uh in the agenda um in in in the in the budget two additional elementary teachers um three additional English as as a second language teachers one additional music teacher um two additional school resource officers are in um Implement implementation of a new language arts curriculum uh preschool playgrounds are in here um and that's paid for by the preschool Grant um we could talk about that a little bit later uh you know going out to the the principles we asked for their input on what they really needed and a lot of them a lot of them came back with student desks and and teacher desks um I mean if few asked for other things but not really this was like the main thing and uh I mean you would have thought I was outfitting the entire uh the entire school with brand new desks for the amount of money to ask for so I kind of like split it up um and gave them all a little bit of what we could what we can do so glosser Township is getting getting uh new desks and chairs uh aiel Elementary uh JW Lily and Union Valley um I don't know the exact numbers but they're relatively the same they range from maybe 40,000 down to like 25,000 depending on what the um how big the school is our parking lot resealing and restriping uh in Mullen Middle School uh Lewis Middle School and Glen Landing Middle School I mean if we're able to squeeze in uh Lauren Fleming since it's right next door we'll try and squeeze that in but we we're trying to get numbers on that right now but that that's also in this budget CW Lis uh Middle School kitchen floor replacement we've done every school in the districts with a new floor in the kitchen this is the last one that needs to be done and this is paid for um by the cafeteria program last year we did two I know we did Glen Landing because I visited many times I forget where the other one was I don't know we did we did too uh three new vehicles are in this budget talked about this earlier this is where all that money is going from cap Reserve um we allocated um 8.9 million out of our current cap Reserve we also allocated another 2.3 million uh to do Union Valley so that's where that 11 million from cap Reserve is it's this this number right here .9 and another 2.3 from Union Valley um I think next summer um three entire schools get all new air conditioning uh an Mullen Union Valley and Glen landing and then the rest of them all get something done to them mostly gymnasium uh air conditioners these are miscellaneous numbers I like to put up there um the amount that the budget is below adequacy basically the state tells you how much you can actually spend in your budget and you can't be over it we're not over it we're actually below it by almost almost $1 million so we're below what the state says we're allowed to spend Bank cap available for future budgets a little over 3 million um it just means that when you put in 2% you can go above the 2% by that amount of money that's all it means uh amount of capital reserve available in future years um so still after allocating over $1 million for what we're going to do for air conditioning we still have over $7 million for future projects and hopefully we keep adding to that year by year um the amount in a maintenance Reserve uh 3.6 and actually we're using a little bit of that this year that's where we're we're sealing the parking lots we're taking it from maintenance Reserve to do that it's actually in what you're going to approve tonight and restricted Reserve uh 6.5 which is consistent from year to year those are those are the figures so does anyone have any questions from the board before we open it up for the Public's questions um you said the other is interest yeah at at the bottom so that would be Revenue what page are you on uh the green one be great if they were numbered oh I did okay overachiever seven page seven yeah um oh yeah you said interest so would that be Revenue coming in no that that's interest we're paying out yeah I miss spooked that's something else okay cool well I mean not everything not everything fits in one of the programs that are here no I got it I thought it was Revenue coming in no that's all okay thank you any other questions from the board I got a few does our district have any debt no debt no not at all for our our maintenance facilities what do we do with the old trucks what we're buying three of them uh normally we would put them out for auction um um I think we want to cannibalize one and use it like as a painting truck or something like that so it won't be used for maintenance it'll be used as a you know transport paint around um but normally we would sell them out and normally they're they're fairly old I mean a lot of like uh safety things have come out you know um since we bought these I mean these are the ones we're replacing I think they're easily 15 years old which ones are being we know maintenance well yeah we have a list we know which ones are gone I mean I don't know off the top of my head but yeah that's all I have thank you can I can I follow up on that yes um you said we have banked oh banked cap yeah if we have no debt then we can't go over the 2% plus the banked de correct you can go over yeah you can go over it mhm even with no debt sure it expires what happens is uh if you don't use what you're allowed to use it you carry it over from year to year to year So eventually it expires so I think there's one more year left on the majority of what's there I think of that 3 million like one of it's like one year is like 2.3 million so I think if we don't use it next year it actually expires got it okay thank you I have a question too on um the attendance enrollment um by grade does that tell you any stories at all or what do you think about the future of anything well I mean I'm not looking at what's there I'm looking at all the building going on in Gloucester Township yeah that's probably what we're going to see happening in the near future when all of them actually get completed I mean you just look around there's tons of building going on residential building um I just wonder what that means for the schools um yeah okay thank you any other questions may I have a motion and second to open up to the public comment please all in favor I I we'll open up the public comment for questions I see none may I have a motion in a second to close the public comment all in favor motion approved may I have a motion a second to adopt the budget please question or comments yeah may have a roll call please Mrs Fritz yes Mr gck yes Mr gibons yes Mr gilch yes Mr Gore yes M Johnson is not here Mr odonnell yes M dentino yes Mr Marks yes we'll move on to 3.0 public comments we have none before we adjourn I would just like to give a little kudos to our finance department want board comments not on here do do I'm gonna back up i' like to open up for board member comments Bo thank you very much um so I wanted to thank um the finance committee which I'm on uh Mr moli um for all of his work on this budget um in the past I have been very anti- uh SRO regarding the money that we are spending not the actual SRO um so I'm kind of excited that we are adding to and Security in our schools is um Paramount in this budget so I wanted to thank you guys for that that's all any other board member comments I just want to say thanks to Jean um for putting this together um we went through a lot but we seem to come up with a good budget so I just want to say thanks to everybody yeah I'll I go that to I think Jean does a great job any questions I have he's always had a creative solution in how to save us money and I think he does a great job any other so I was going to give Jean a little bit of a compliment but since he didn't put board member comments on here take one back so I I want to give kudos not only to our our current business offices really for the past four or five years over the past four or five years in this District we have had a 3.5% over five years that that is that is astonishing to me that that shows the the financial responsibility that this district has done and I will give everybody from Mr buo down to his whole team a thank you um you keep your the money responsible and you give not only the students the teachers the best Services we absolutely can so I thank you i' like you to keep up the good work and keep that going in the future at this time I have a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor good night everybody thank you for coming