Manalapan: GOP PRIMARY JUNE 3 - ***VOTE COLUMN 1***

Candidates vie for GOP nomination

Manalapan Republican County Committee
has nominated Ryan Green and William Garcia

...there's a reason why...

****** ON JUNE 3rd - VOTE COLUMN 1 ******

From left to right: Kalman, Steven, Ryan, William

BY KATHY BARATTA Staff Writer

Four residents are continuing their campaign to secure the Manalapan Republican Party nomination in the June 3 primary and earn a place on the November general election ballot.

Two three-year terms on the Manalapan Township Committee will be up for grabs in the November general election.

The Manalapan Republican County Committee has nominated Ryan Green andWilliam Garcia to run for seats on the committee. They are being challenged in the primary by Kalman Budai and Steven Johnson.

The Manalapan Democratic County Committee has nominated Township Committeewoman Michelle Roth, who is serving as Manalapan's mayor this year, and Donald Holland to run for seats on the committee. Roth and Holland are unchallenged in the primary.

Individuals who are eligible to vote in the June 3 Republican primary are those people who are already registered as a Republican, or any unaffiliated individual who shows up at the polls on Election Day and registers as a Republican, according to Municipal Clerk Rose Ann Weeden.

Weeden said that after the primary election, people who switched from unaffiliated to Republican in order to vote in the primary may reregister as unaffiliated.

Polls will be open between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. June 3 at the municipality's regular polling places.

Green, 28, is a 20-year resident of Manalapan. He is a school social worker with the Perth Amboy School District in Middlesex County. Green is a member of the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education. If he wins the June 3 primary and is eventually elected to the Township Committee in November, he will have to resign from the school board.

Garcia, 42, is a project manager for a major financial institution in New York City. He has lived in Manalapan for two years.

Budai, 50, has been a resident of Manalapan for 12 years. He is the owner of a ceramic tile company. Prior to that he was a dispatcher for the Suburban Transit Bus Company.

Johnson, 54, is employed in the office automation business, He has been a Manalapan resident for 11 years. He said that in the past he has been responsible for managing a staff of 50 people and a business operating budget of $30 million.

•••

Budai and Johnson, who sought the Republican County Committee nomination but did not receive it, said they decided to mount a primary challenge and run for the Township Committee because Green and Garcia are, in their words, candidates "in name only." They said neither man was a registered Republican until February.

Green and Garcia responded to that broadside.

According to Green, who grew up in Manalapan and was re-elected to a second term on the school board in April, he had always kept his political registration as unaffiliated because he felt doing so would "leave the politics out of the school board, where I don't believe they belong."

However, Green said he has always been a Republican "philosophically" - a term Garcia also embraced when told that was how Green had put it - and has always voted Republican.

Speaking about his voting record on the school board, Green said, "I think my voting record as a fiscal conservative while on the board speaks to my Republican mind-set."

Garcia said when he moved to Manalapan from Queens, N.Y., in 2006, he registered as a Republican when he registered his motor vehicles and took care of other tasks. At least, he said he thought he had done so. He said it was not until he was looking into voting in the upcoming presidential election that he found out his voting registration had not been properly filed and he was listed in his voter affiliation as unaffiliated.

Garcia said he has been a registered Republican since he was 18. He said he explained all this to the selection committee at the time of his interview "and they were OK with it once it was explained."

•••

All four men who are running for a seat on the public body that governs Manalapan were asked to name something they like about the community.

Garcia said it was the "good schools and spaciousness" that hooked him when he was looking for a New Jersey community to move his family into; that and the fact his wife had family in the area made it a marriage of suburban ideals and commuter convenience, given Manalapan's proximity to Wall Street via public transportation.

Green said that given the fact that he grew up in Manalapan, he thought it would be almost impossible to instantly come up with a particular observation. Then he recounted something that happened in the past few weeks that reminded him how much he loves living in Manalapan and is looking forward to raising a family here.

He said shortly after moving into the home in the Yorktowne development where he now resides, there was a knock on the door. Green, who will be married in June, said he almost could not believe it, but "it was a neighbor from the block with an apple pie who just wanted to say 'welcome to the neighborhood.' It's people like that who remind you what a great place Manalapan is to live."

Johnson also mentioned the people who make up the community, but said there are other things he likes aboutManalapan.

"I like that we have Monmouth Battlefield State Park. I like that we have a fourtime championship cheerleading squad and I like that we have the western branch of theMonmouth County Library."

Budai, who has been a member of several committees and boards, including the Manalapan Recreation Advisory Board, said some of the highlights of Manalapan are manifested in its recreation center and programs.

"Manalapan's ball fields are state-ofthe art and the best in the county, if not the state," he said, while also alluding to what he called the spirit of the community and its residents, particularly those who volunteer for municipal boards and committees.

"We have the best volunteers and our police department is second to none. It's just the spirit of the community; it's everybody from the youngsters to the seniors," Budai said.

•••

Budai said he believes his experience as a business owner would serve him well as an elected official. He said his previous employment with Suburban Transit would give him an understanding of issues facing commuters and transportation companies.

Speaking about municipal finances, Budai said he would examine each municipal department to look at the staffing levels and the efficiency of the department with an eye on trimming costs.

Johnson said he would concentrate on finalizing plans for The Village at Manalapan, a 500,000-square-foot retail-commercial complex planned for the intersection of Millhurst Road and Route 33. The project received preliminary approval from the Planning Board more than a year ago but has never gotten off the ground for a variety of reasons.

"We should be concentrating on getting these ratables instead of spending a million bucks on a sports field," Johnson said, alluding to the construction of an $800,000 artificial turf playing field of which he has been critical.

Garcia said his professional expertise would serve him well in reviewing a municipal budget "to see where our money is being spent and how we could make operations more efficient."

However, said Garcia, "I would never advocate cuts that would adversely affect our safety and services."

He said he would focus attention on the types of service contracts the township has on all of its equipment in an effort to see if there can be consolidation and savings.

"It is the little things that add up," he said.

•••

All four candidates were asked why they should be the person Republicans choose on June 3 to run for a seat on the Township Committee in November.

"First and foremost, I am a husband and a father involved in community activities. I am one of my neighbors. I am not a politician," Garcia said. "Bill Garcia was born a Republican and a fiscal conservative. My blood is Republican and I want smaller government."

Green said his experience on the Manalapan Englishtown school board gives him a leg up because of that unique perspective and because the school district has been working with Manalapan to develop a shared services agreement. Green said he has been involved with the development of that agreement.

"I have the right experience at the right time," he said, adding that one area he would examine as a member of the Township Committee would be the administration salaries for Manalapan's summer recreation program, which he said have been increased for 2008.

Speaking about himself and Budai, Johnson said, "We are experienced, hardworking people dedicated to the town. That is who should be running in the general election."

Budai said if he is elected to the Township Committee, he will not take municipal health benefits. He estimated that decision would save taxpayers between $15,000 and $17,000 per year.

Johnson also decried taxpayers paying for health benefits for the members of the governing body. He said Township Committee members should get their health insurance through their place of employment and not expect the taxpayers to pay for health benefits for what is basically a part-time job.
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Remember - vote for the True Republicans -
the ones selected by the nominating committee.
************ VOTE COLUMN 1 ********************

Audits flag spending by poor districts

The audits of all 31 Abbott districts can be found at
www.state.nj.us/education
under the finance section.

Story by Trish G. Graber

tgraber@sjnewsco.com

TRENTON Some of the state's poorest school districts required by court order to receive extra state funding spent thousands of dollars on consultants, travel and sports-related festivities, according to audits of 27 Abbott districts released last week.

In Bridgeton, Cumberland County, school officials spent more than $10,000 to send staff to conferences, including some in Atlanta, Ohio, Orlando and San Diego. They paid a consultant, Salmon Ventures, $12,000 over three months for grant writing and to lobby state agencies.

nd the Bridgeton district paid $1,383 to send students to a Double Dutch jumprope competition in South Carolina, according to the audit conducted by KPMG LLP in New York.

In Phillipsburg School District, Warren County, officials used $15,085 to buy banners for their 100th anniversary football game and their 100th game with their archrival in Easton, Pa.

The district also paid a consultant $50,000 to get input from the community on a new high school, an audit by Livingston-based Wiss & Company LLP showed.

In other areas, Asbury Park paid $4,280 for golf shirts and jackets for athletic coaches. Gloucester City paid $6,116 for rain jackets for the football team.

All of the expenditures, except travel, were flagged by auditors who looked at information from the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years in 27 of the state's Abbott Districts, released last week by the Department of Education.

But many of the practices questioned may soon come to an end.

The department used the findings to develop new rules for school districts and to shape the job description of the new executive county superintendents, in an attempt to enhance the accountability of all districts.

State education officials said the new safeguards, when they are in place, will make it much less likely that some of the expenditures questioned in the audits will occur again.

"More important than some of the individual expenditures is the fact that some of those audits identified that in many of those districts they didn't have internal controls that could catch these things before they happened," said DOE spokeswoman Kathryn Forsyth. "(The regulations) are going to stop some of these practices by code."

The proposed rules give executive county superintendents the ability to comb through district budgets and eliminate non-instructional expenditures. They make it easier for state officials to withhold state aid if they believe a district is wasting money.

They also provide guidelines for school officials in areas where the state saw excessive spending: Travel, meal reimbursements, professional services and public relations.

For example, the guidelines prohibit overnight stays for school officials if a conference is held within 50 miles of their home and limit the number of school officials that can take out-of-state trips together.

The state is also proposing to prohibit jobs within districts solely for public relations purposes and to crack down on professional service contracting.

District superintendents said the new regulations will be helpful to provide parameters for spending, but they defended their districts' past purchases.

"I didn't think we were out of line with what we were doing," said Phillipsburg's Acting Superintendent George Chando, who was not head of the district during the years the expenditures took place.

In a written response to the audit, district officials said the banners were bought for a football game aired nationally by ESPN, which paid a fee for the broadcast. They also noted that the football program brought in $72,564 during the 2004-2005 school year and $76,608 during the 2005-2006 school year.

Phillipsburg School District also contended that the $50,000 paid to the consultant was not only to collect data but to help the district prepare for a referendum needed for a new school delayed indefinitely after the bankruptcy of the Schools Construction Corporation.

In his case, Bridgeton Superintendent Victor Gilson said the travel by staff was necessary for professional development and the Double Dutch competition was a way to keep students engaged in an area where gangs are prevalent.

The consultant, he said, paid for itself many times over by bringing in money for the reconstruction of the district's stadium and track, including $196,000 from federal officials. To date, he said, the district has raised $1.4 million for the $6 million project.

Gilson said he would not consider any of the expenditures out of order.

He added that many non-Abbotts spend money on the same things, only those districts are not operating under the state's microscope.

"When I was the superintendent of a non-Abbott, we did all these things," said Gilson, the former superintendent in Dennis Township in Cape May County. "To me, it's a very positive story for Bridgeton ... the purpose of these audits were to find dirt and all they found was a little bit of dust."

The audits finalize the work required by a Supreme Court order to audit all 31 Abbott school districts those the state is required to allocate extra funding to make up for economic shortfalls. Audits in the others, Camden, Jersey City, Newark and Paterson, were released last year.

The audits of all 31 Abbott districts can be found at www.state.nj.us/education under the finance section.

N.J. sets rules for school spending

...but who will enforce over-spending? The superintendents making $200,000+ a year?

School districts seeking advice on how to spend tax dollars got a dense lesson from the state on Wednesday.

The Education Department released a 205-page rulebook on how districts must craft their budgets, hire and fire top administrators, and handle shared-service agreements with neighboring towns. The reforms are required under new laws aimed at reducing New Jersey's property taxes, the highest in the nation.

"Taxpayers have been extremely generous," Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said in Trenton. "Given our economic challenges ... it is important that we focus on the efficient use of the resources that are available."

Among other provisions, the rules allow executive county superintendents to issue line-item vetoes on local budgets and order thorough audits of districts they think spend too much. In Bergen County, that authority is given to longtime Superintendent Aaron Graham. Passaic County does not yet have a county superintendent. The job is temporarily held by Robert Gilmartin, the former schools chief in West Milford.

The rules are set to be officially approved in coming weeks and all school districts are expected to follow them during the 2008-09 school year. They put in place mandates set by New Jersey's new school funding formula, the School District Fiscal Accountability Act and the "CORE" reform law that emerged from last year's special legislative session on property tax reform.

"The governor has made it clear," Davy said. "The public is telling us that they want greater transparency and accountability."

Many of the reforms have already been phased in during the current budget season, such as having county superintendents review requests for tax increases over a 4 percent cap.

In recent years, superintendents have reacted with anger or confusion to the states' tightening grip on local spending. However, those public complaints faded after Governor Corzine increased state aid to school districts by more than $500 million this year.

Tenafly Superintendent Mort Sherman said most superintendents would agree that transparency is a good thing in school budgets — in no small part because the public must vote to approve them every year.

"The overwhelming majority of county and local superintendents will say this is OK," he said. "Times are tough. We need to roll up our sleeves."

The state School Boards Association had expressed concern about some of the reforms as the original laws were being debated; spokesman Frank Belluscio said his group had not yet seen the draft rules on Wednesday. He recalled the organization's worry about making county superintendents gubernatorial appointees.

"That brings in a lot of political concerns," he said.

He said that while the goals of the reforms were shared, his organization "would have be concerned about any type of over-regulation. ... School boards in New Jersey are highly fiscally responsible, and they operate under an ethics act that is stricter than that for other public officials."