Town Council Hurts Students, Taxpayers

Shame on the Township Council for needlessly eliminating $1 million dollars from the school budget. Such a move will neither be beneficial to the students and schools nor to the taxpayers.

A town is only as good as its schools. Without a good school system, property values will decline and, more importantly, the young people in the community will not have the opportunity to receive the best education.

The new Board of Education, however, is already doing all it can to ensure that Hillsiders get the best value for their tax dollars. Alternative sources of funding will be sought and new, affordable educational programs for the schools will be explored. Not only that, but the new school board majority is committed to eliminating patronage and corruption from the district's list of expenses - a move that will save tens of thousands in the long run.

But to cut a million dollars, as the Town Council has done, is not prudent. Such a cut will not give the school board the opportunity to reduce costs rationally. In order for the board to meet those cuts on such short notice, it can only eliminate positions, and sometimes, necessary positions.

Although the Township Council did not have to reduce the budget by that amount, it chose to do so anyway. It should be noted that last year, when the Council's allies controlled the school board, the budget was cut by an amount that could be offset by the surplus. A year before that, when the same majority controlled the board, an even lesser amount was cut by the Council. To put it frankly, the Council was not looking out for the interests of the taxpayers or students when it cut the budget this year -instead they were playing the game of politics as usual.

The school board should have been allowed to make its own cuts and reduce its own spending without the irrational time constraints set on them by the Council's resolution. Now the district will have an even tougher time recovering from the mess created by the Hillside political machine and we only have the Township Council to thank for that.