Subject: Mullica school tax holding steady: by Timothy Puko Staff writer The Press; The school district is proposing not to raise taxes in part because of increasing state aid and decreasing enrollment. “We felt it was only fair, when we did get the support from the state, that we gave (taxpayers) a no increase, if at all possible,” Superintendent Richard A. Goldberg said. “They deserved a break.” Taxes went up more than 12 percent last year, a hike voters narrowly approved last April. Under the current proposal, the tax rate would stay the same, at $1.253 on every $100 of assessed property value. The district will hear public comment on the budget at 7 p.m. tonight (that was last night). The total budget is proposed at about $9.7 million, an almost $250,000 increase from last year’s plan. State aid into the district will increase 8.5 percent, allowing the district to keep taxes the same while the budget goes up, Goldberg said. “We were really throwing everything overboard not knowing what was going to happen with the state aid,” he added. “Luckily, this year we’ll be able to maintain our programs.” The district will also cut three teachers because of an enrollment drop, Goldberg said. District officials plan to create a new language arts program, to extend day and summer programs, and to buy new textbooks, he said. The budget would also allow the district to maintain its technology program, which Goldberg said would have ben threatened if the district received less state aid.

RESPONSE: Like many other middle class towns in New Jersey, Mullica had been brutalized by the Republican Whitman income tax cuts for the super rich which resulted over the last half dozen years of flat education funding from the State. With increases in salaries and other costs like fuel, transportation and everything else ... local property taxes had to be substantially raised to make up for the funding that resulted from cutting income taxes for those who are super rich.

This is the essence of the Republi CON. Claim to cut taxes, when in reality it is primarily taxes on the wealthy you are cutting and that forces middle class towns to raise property taxes way above the amount most middle class people save in cuts in income taxes. This while those who are super rich tend to live in wealthy towns and their large ... tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings from income tax cuts afford them ...even with a few thousand dollars in increased property taxes...a net income gain...rich people paying less in to the State to help fund education resulted in flat funding for towns like Mullica and thus force steep property tax increases to fund education.

Too many dumb voters failed to see the CON. But now with Democrats in control of the State, we see middle class Mullica getting the needed increase in State aid and thus no increase in property taxes to fund education. One has to be an idiot to continue vote Republican and not connect these dots of the game of State REPUGS.