Mark Rosman

In the News

Release of budget info

serves community

Editor's note: Due to an error in the production of last week's newspaper, this column did not run in its entirety.

I debated with myself before sitting down to write this column. Some people may see it as a complaint and not really care all that much about the particular travails of being the editor of a local newspaper.

However, I concluded that my experience with Howell K-8 school district administrators and Board of Education members last week may be indicative of the way those administrators treat their employers - all of the residents of Howell.

Every year at this time, we begin writing school budget stories. It happens every spring.

Last week our Howell reporter, who is new to the beat, asked Howell school administrators when the board would be introducing its tentative 2007-08 school year budget. The reporter was given an answer that made no sense and was not an answer to the question she had asked. Welcome to Howell.

Frankly, I had anticipated that my reporter would be misled, and so my expectations were met.

That is when I decided to get involved. I called the school offices and asked the same question - "When will you be introducing your budget?" - knowing full well before I asked that a tentative budget had to be submitted to the county superintendent of schools by March 13. On my initial call, I was informed by my contact in the district that the only thing planned for the 2007-08 budget was a public hearing scheduled for March 28.

I tried my best to explain that I was not asking about the public hearing for the budget, I was asking about the budget's introduction.

I implored my contact in the district to please ask again about the introduction of the budget. Experience told me I was getting a snow job from someone in the board offices.

In the meantime, I started to call school board members to ask the same question about the introduction of the budget. One board member had very little to say about the topic, and a second board member finally answered my question by saying that the budget had been introduced at the March 6 public meeting of the board's finance and education committees.

I asked him if I could have the budget figures he claimed had been presented on March 6, and he told me that the release of any budget information would be at the sole discretion of Herbert Massa, the board's business administrator. The board member said if Massa declined to release budget information then so would all of the board members.

I don't know if that second board member was lying to me or was misinformed when we spoke on March 9, because minutes later I got a phone call back from my contact at the school offices who told me that yes, as I had been saying for hours, the full board would indeed have to hold a special meeting to introduce the tentative budget. That special meeting was expected to be held this week.

I hope this is not how parents who call the school district's administrative offices are dealt with.

I was finally given some basic information about the 2007-08 budget.

All of my phone calls apparently made someone think about what was happening, because by Monday I had an offer from the superintendent to speak about the budget and I was being provided with pertinent information about the proposed spending plan.

I hope administrators will be forthcoming with information when residents start to ask questions about the budget. The administrators' task will be made more difficult this year because all Howell properties have been revalued and residents are very much on edge about how much their property taxes will be going up.

I am asking the Howell board and administration to be as upfront as possible with the media and the public about the proposed $108 million budget and the way it will impact taxes.

The person who was caught in the middle of this issue was Cherylyn Murphy, the school district's excellent public information officer.

Murphy does an outstanding job of keeping our newspaper up to date with what is happening in Howell schools. She lets us know when special programs are being held and invites our reporters to come into the schools to cover these events. Her assistance is very much appreciated.

During a telephone call, I took out my frustration at not getting the answers I believed I should be getting about the budget on Murphy, who was just doing her job by relaying to me the answers she had been given. I was wrong to do so and for that I offer Murphy my apology.

However, I do not apologize to administrators like Massa and board members who try to keep budget information from the public until the last possible minute. We know when the budget information is available, and we are doing our job by asking for it to be provided to us so that we may provide it to the public.

Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the Tri-Town News.