Having arrived close to the start of the last Council meeting, I did not get a copy of the explanatory notes regarding the Borough Budget, but I did get a copy of the Budget itself.
As noted in the meeting it does not raise taxes and it seems fairly reasonable.
There was one item that struck me despite knowing the arrangement. I guess seeing it in the context of the budget has prompted me to ask what everyone else thinks.
Traditionally, the Borough hires crossing guards, who are approved by the NASD. The cost is split between the two bodies (I'm pretty sure the NASD approves, not certain).
The Borough budgets $80,000 as an expense and the NASD reimburses half that amount.
The Crossing Guards provide an invaluable service to our children, but does it strike anyone else that the Borough is paying for the safe transportation of our children to school? The townships don't pay for busing, why should the borough have to pay this fee? To me, it is the Borough subsidizing the school district for transportation.
I make this point because the borough has much less money to work with than the NASD and in light of the non-stop tax increases by the NASD it seems unfair that part of our Borough tax dollars should also go to the NASD. It takes away from services that could go specifically to the borough.
The $80,000 out of $3,651,270 represents 2.2% of the total expenditures of the Borough.
The NASD is budgeted to spend $2,705,945 on Transportation alone. (this figure is up nearly $400,000 from the 2003-2004 budget).
The Townships do not pay for busing, which borough residents do not receive. So why should the Borough pay for crossing guards to ensure safe transportation of students?
Again, I'm not arguing against the crossing guards, but the funding source of them.
What do you think? Should the Borough pay for this service? Or should the District reimburse the Borough in full?
8 comments:
I never gave it any thought and I never would have thought of crossing guards as "transportation". It's food for thought. It is something to be brought up at a council meeting maybe. Go for it!!
The students in the Borough are not the only students in the district excluded from bus service. NASD does not provide transportation to any student living within 1 mile of their school of enrollment. I cannot speak for the other townships, but living in Lower Nazareth, I know we do not have crossing guards. I think it's a great idea and if the district provides this for the borough students, we should provide for all walking students. Kudos to the Borough officials for thinking of the safety of their students and shame on the Lower Nazareth officials for not.
Actually, in lower Nazareth the only students who walk are those who live on the same side of Newburg Road as the Elementary school and can access the path from the school to the neighborhoods(as I recall there was something about a family removing it and having to put it back in or something). To the best of my understanding, these neighborhoods do not have crosswalks where crossing guards could be stationed.
The District removed the one crossing guard it had on Newburg Road infront of the school, had the road declared hazardous, and chose to bus students living across the street because the parents complained the walk was too far when the developer turned over streets to the township (when I attended the school there were a lot of walkers using that crossing - they are all bused now).
By state law the district is not obligated to bus students up to either 1 or 1.5 miles (can't recall which right now) by public roadways for elementary and another .5 miles for secondary.
Similarly, despite homes within one mile or so of Bushkill, because the roads are declared hazardous, and there are no crossing guards they too do not have walkers.
My point however, is that it is the school district's responsibility not the borough's. The borough is incurring a school expense.
I don't disagree at all that the crossing guards are good and do an excellent job. I see them everyday on our walk to and from school.
But consider that the transportation budget is $2,705,945, $40,000 of which goes to borough students, the remaining $2.65 million goes to the townships and then borough residents have to pay another $40,000 in borough taxes to ensure safe transport.
This doesn't seem right.
The 'path' you heard about was unfortunately put through a single taxpayer's yard. NASD and Lower Nazareth Township have placed the burden of liability and maintenance, snow/ice removal etc. on the homeowner.
This is not right.
You are right, the students on the opposite side of Newburg Road are provided with bus service. However, a large number do not use it. The buses arrive and leave half empty, the parent pickup/dropoff line is huge.
Unfortunately, our tax dollars are paying for extremely under utilized buses.
This is not right either.
My point is, there are a number of transportation issues in the district that are ignored.
I don't think the borough should bear the cost of the school crossing guards.
I don't think individual homeowners should bear the liability and maintenance of walking paths to school.
I don't think we, as taxpayers, should keep incurring increased transportation costs for buses that are highly underutilized.
If you can get NASD to pay for the crossing guards -- do it. We haven't made much progress here in Lower Nazareth!
Having the path is like having the only sidewalk in the township. And having sidewalks of my own, I understand the maintenance and postential cost of them, but I'm not going to get into the sidewalk issue for the purpose of this post (a bit off topic though related).
The busing issue is interesting, especially when you consider the new loop that was added at taxpayer expense.
Safe assumption this was to assist with the parent drop off you mention?
The buses are empty because many parents bring their kids in the morning on the way to work, then allow them to latch key on the way home by taking the bus, walking to the house and waiting for the first parent to arrive.
I was surprised to see that transportation costs have increased $100,000 per year for the past four years.
When the MS was built and we moved 6th grade from elementary to secondary we did not eliminate bus runs. The same number of buses ran on the elementary level despite having one grade less to transport.
The number of riders per bus fell significantly from close to max on most 66-72 (now keep in mind many as you state don't ride so the bus wasn't that full most of the time) to somewhere around mid 50s.
My guess is that people didn't want their kids sitting three to a seat, so instead of rostering the buses back up to the previous levels, we added more bus runs and said look at all the kids moving in we need more buses. Again just a guess.
The compounding problem is we lose state funding as a result. The NASD is reimbursed based on a state formula. One component is highest daily ridership. When a bus had 68-70 kids, it didn't matter if 12 rode on that bus for secondary run, the higher number was used to calculate the reimbursement. When the number dropped to 50's we lost roughly 20 kids per bus, per day, per mile driven.
The problem the district faces is to roster the buses back up to higher levels means parents will complain that they are overcrowded on the bus. They don't want complaints.
You're right there are many transportation problems and I'm sure these are only a few, but given the cost and the fact that it is not an educational related expense, it seems here is a place where we can pinch pennies and put those saved toward education.
Thanks for the comments and insight!
The "Path" was added after the home owner purchased the lot and they didn't find out about it until they went for their CO, which was held until the path was done.
This path is used by students walking to/from school, general pedestrial traffic, and until recently, cars and motorcycles until they finally erected barriers to stop them.
When you buy a house knowing there is a sidewalk on the property, you do so with full disclosure. At LNES, this was done in a very underhanded way by both the township and the school.
As to the buses at LNES, you can sit there and see, at both drop off and pick up, that the vast majority of them are at the most 50% full. During inclement weather, the ridership drops even lower. This can easily be seen by the long line of cars waiting to either drop off or pick up.
Yes, the district spent a lot of money to pave the new loop at LNES. This was to get cars off of Newburg Road (causing traffic problems) an into the parking lot.
Sitting in the line, I could see that very few of the drivers were "black path" parents, and many were from the neighborhood across the street that complained about the unsafe crossing, got their bus and now don't use it.
Here I don't fault the district, but the parents. Your tax dollars are going to pay for the buses, yet they are not used. So, as you are paying for the bus, you are also paying for the gas you are burning sitting in a long line of cars.
In other districts I have seen (in other states), if you want a bus ride, you need to pay for it (outside of your normal taxes).
Maybe this would be a good option for the district to investigate as they could lower an extremely high transportation budget and move those dollars to other initiatives.
Or, they could just do some simple analysis of ridership and consolidate some of the low ridership routes.
Shafer buses are no better than 50% full in the morning. I can't speak for the afternoon because my child goes to after school care. But in the morning, there are very few kids on the bus.
I would ask the parents who drive their kids to school: What's wrong with the buses? Maybe you're on the way to work, but I would guess that the bus probably picks up little Jimmy/Sally at the same time (if not before) the time that your car finally gets to the front of the drop off line.
I think riding the bus is good for kids. They see different kids they might not see during the day. They may have conflicts that arise which can teach them conflict resolution and means of dealing with those issues.
Finally, I sure hope those parents taking their kids to school and idling for minutes in their monstrous SUVs aren't the same ones complaining about pollution...
I took a look at the Shafer buses this morning and it does seem they are light. Some seats were altogether empty and many had one, some two, and none that I could see three to a seat.
Considering it is k-5 (and it used to be k-6) they ought to mostly fit 3 to a seat for a five to twenty minute ride. The district could probably do a better job squeezing more out of the transportation money that is spent.
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