Voss Talks Taxes, County Budget, Services [VIDEO]
Bergen County Freeholder’s talk will air on cable access later in the week. This video provides a preview.
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Bergen County Freeholder Joan Voss of Fort Lee discussed taxes, elections, the county budget and other issues Wednesday at the Fort Lee Public Library, where she was invited by the United Homeowners of the Borough of Fort Lee to speak with residents about county services.
“People want to have a hands-on approach to government,” Voss said. “They want to know where their tax dollar is being spent.”
She said about 30 percent of people’s taxes go toward running the municipal government, about 60 percent go to the school system and roughly 10 percent go to the county.
She also said elections—whether school board, primary or general elections—are “very, very expensive,” costing the borough about $40,000 each.
Voss described recent Freeholder meetings as “contentious” because “everybody wants to slice things out of the budget.”
“Twenty-five percent was cut across the board for several of the health services,” she said.
Voss’s talk was followed by a question and answer session with the audience at the library, during which she touched on the Bergen County Jail, hospitals and the importance of grant writing, among other topics.
The program can be seen in its entirety Thursday, May 3, and Saturday, May 5, at 8 p.m. on cable access.
This video features excerpts of what will air on Time Warner Cable channel 81 and FiOS channel 34.
Art Elmers
11:41 am on Monday, April 30, 2012
The numbers don't add up. While I have great respect for Ms Voss and what she has done for Fort Lee, I disagree with her stating that approximately 30% of taxes go to the municipality while 60% go to schools and 10% to the County.
That may in general be the case elsewhere but not in Fort Lee.
Looking at the recently approved 2012 Municipal and 2012-2013 School Budgets I noted that the Municipal Tax Levy is $56,611,017. In comparison the School Tax Levy is $52,275,777. This is makes the School Tax Levy 48% and the Municipal Tax Levy 52% of the combined Tax Levies.
I also noted that the School District receives State Aid as well as State and Federal Grants for a total of $3,160,517. If we count these the Total School Taxes paid by Fort Lee Taxpayers is $55,436,294 or approximately 49.5% of the total.
The correct statement should therefore be "about 45% of people's taxes goes to the schools, 45% to the Municipal government and 10% to the county.
I ask Ms. Voss to rethink and correct her statement or I ask her to correct me. I would be happy to stand corrected.
I feel this is just one reason why Fort Lee has been so reluctant to tackle the overcrowding problem in our schools. I have heard many times " if you want to control your property taxes just look at the school budget".
Stating that 60% of our taxes go to the schools just helps perpetuate this myth.
I think we can all agree that when we debate where our tax dollars go we need to know the facts.
Keith Jensen
3:06 am on Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Mayor and Council do not care about reducing our taxes 33%.The Board of Education does, or they did when executing the FSF resolution.
Freeholder Voss points out that the education formula is not right. She knows this first hand as a former State Assemblywoman focused on education.
Regardless of the exact allocation of taxes, and it is quite difficult for anyone to truly know what that number is considering the school funding formula is so convoluted, the majority of collected tax is spent on education. However, most of the taxes earmarked for education are not spent in the town in which they are collected.
85% of the municipalities in NJ have most of their school taxes sent to Trenton and distributed across 31 school districts called Abbott Districts which include: the revitalized Asbury Park, the expensive Hoboken and the Gold Coast of Blvd. East. to name a few.
Locally: Teaneck, Hackensack, Englewood and the poorest family in Fort Lee receive nothing. I point out that the richest family in these Abbott Districts receive free pre-K education for their children because they live in an Abbott District. Yes, its free even if you make $500K a year!
Bravo Assemblywoman Voss for pointing out the erred school funding formula.
Shame on the Board of Education for not pressing the Mayor and Council for voting on a resolution pointing out that the school funding formula is in fact not fair to Fort Lee.
Today we send $27MM to the Abbott Districts annually. That is sad.
David Sarnoff
8:23 am on Wednesday, May 2, 2012
In my opinion, the state funding formula for education needs to be significantly revised. Fort Lee is at a terrible disadvantage in funding our school district when we get pennies back for every dollar we send to Trenton. As a result, we have had to cut teaching positions, programs and are unable to implement new programs. We desperately needed to pass a bond referendum, primarily, to fix infrastructure. If we were to receive back a reasonable amount of our tax dollars from the state, we would be able to provide ongoing maintenance for our infrastructure and not have to bond debt in the future. Please keep in mind that while our state funding is painfully small, our school district continues to grow and in many cases beyond projections. School 1 has over 620 students (built for about 400) and it is severely overcrowded, to the point, that an internal closet was converted to a classroom for small group instruction. Since 1991, Fort Lee's enrollment has increased by over 1000 students and we are only now adding a small amount of classrooms in School 1 and the Middle School. The Abbot decision may have been decided with good intentions, however, it's unintended consequences has been to punish districts like Fort Lee that have had to make do with much less. I agree with Keith that we should urge our legislators to make state aid to school funding more equitable.