April 15, 2009 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 31
FLOW school board candidates
(continued from page 4) for the school board from Wyckoff, is running unopposed as is incumbent Ira Belsky, who is a Franklin Lakes representative. Petersen has been a resident of Oakland for 21 years and has a daughter who graduated from Ramapo High School in 2007 and a son who is a junior at Indian Hills High School. She has a BA from the College of Saint Elizabeth with international studies at Fribourg University in Fribourg, Switzerland, and an MA from William Paterson University. Currently she is a career educator who is presently with the Demarest school system. Completing her second term on the board, Petersen currently serves as the chair of the Education Committee and as a member of the Policy and Personnel committees. In the community, she is on the board of trustees of the Oakland Public Library and is a member of the Woman’s Club of Oakland and a past trustee of the “Onstage” musical theater. Pierce has been an Oakland resident for 20 years and has a child who is a junior at Indian Hills High School. She has a master’s degree in business administration and is retired from AT&T, where she was a business executive responsible for a $6 million budget. Pierce has been active in town in the Cub Scouts and in the Oakland Recreation Department where she was a baseball coach and coordinated the baseball program for a number of years. She has also been active in the Heights and Valley Middle School PTOs, and was vice president of the Oakland Education Foundation. ees at the department of public works or other departments, no recording secretaries for the environmental commission and the recreation and parks department, no new computers or software will be purchased, and the borough’s document imaging project will not move forward. Attendance at the League of Municipalities Convention and the Municipal Managers Conference will not be reimbursed and the purchase of a police vehicle has been canceled and the borough’s town fair will not be held unless it is self-sustaining. Hart also advised that the budget reflects the potential savings from the retirement of the borough’s police chief although he emphasized that no such agreement has yet been finalized. The revenues in the 2009 budget include $1,300,000 of the borough’s surplus revenues, a decrease of $305,000; $3,189,777 of miscellaneous revenues such as construcGebhard is a senior account executive with a paper printing firm who has had two children graduate from Ramapo High School. He has a BS in marketing from Lynchburg College in Virginia, and has coached several sports in the Wyckoff Recreation program, where he was baseball commissioner for four years. He has also been vice president of the Ramapo High School Sports Booster Club. Belsky is completing his second term on the board. He has been the board’s Education Committee chairman and served on the Personnel/Goals/Evaluation Committee, and chaired the ad hoc committee that evaluated new legal representation for the board. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Law School, he is a semi-retired attorney and business executive who practiced law for 25 years and was involved in a number of businesses. tion code fees, interest revenue, municipal court fees, and license and permit fees, a decrease of $893,222; $600,000 from receipts from delinquent taxes, an increase of $60,000; and $9,441,876 to be raised by taxation, an increase of $832,834. The amount of spending in this budget decreased by 3.36 percent from the 2008 budget and the decrease in the amount of surplus used in this budget versus the 2008 budget decreased by 30 percent. But the amount that must be raised by taxation increased by 9.7 percent. The borough’s outstanding debt is $13,321,000 in serial bonds and $3,132,500 in bond anticipation notes and there is $194,750 in bonds and notes that have been authorized but not yet issued. The council will hold a public hearing on this budget, and is expected to adopt it, at its regular public meeting on May 19.
Municipal budget
(continued from page 5) Borough Administrator Gregory Hart listed some of the $1.1 million in reductions that have been made since the budget was first drafted. They include no salary increases for non-contracted employees who will now have to contribute toward their medical insurance, furloughs of employees for two days a month totaling 16 days a year starting May 1, a 39 percent reduction in the recreation and parks staff, a 20 percent staff reduction in the finance department, a reduction of the zoning officer’s work time, and a seven percent reduction in the police force. Hart advised that the municipal building will remain open five days a week, but there will be no summer employ-
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