South Orange Passes Budget, Despite Uncertainty on SOPAC and CCR

The South Orange Board of Trustees adopted a $33.5 municipal budget Monday night with a 1.43 percent rise in the tax rate, equivalent to $62 on the average assessed home. Village President Alex Torpey said this was the lowest tax increase in nearly 15 years.  

Most of the discussion before the vote centered on the township’s funding of the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC), which is increasing to $309,000 from $239,000 in 2012, and the Community Coalition on Race (CCR), which is earmarked for $18,000. 

Resident Bob Chandross asked the board not to fund either organization.  “SOPAC has been a failure from day one,” said Chandross, who formerly served on the Citizen’s Budget Advisory Committee. He said the arts center had not filed financial reports (990s) in several years, and that the township’s recent decision to erase the arts center’s debt included no “ironclad guarantees.” Chandross predicted that the center’s financial woes would continue and it would ask the township for an increase in its subsidy in the future. “If you do [continue funding them], the mess will continue.” 

Trustee Sheena Collum asked if the board was prepared to “resolve” the lingering issues about SOPAC and CCR funding. Trustees Walter Clarke and Deborah Davis Ford, liaisons to the CCR, said they had talked to its leaders since the last BOT meeting but that nothing had been resolved. "We have not been able to get to that point and I would not hold up the budget for that," said Davis Ford.

Levinson asked if the board could set a deadline for receiving a service agreement from CCR. Township Administrator Barry Lewis said CCR had provided a budget and breakdown of activities and that he was attempting to quantify their value to the community. 

Torpey pointed out that the BOT had to approve separate, stand-alone resolutions to agree to fund non-profits despite any amount earmarked in the budget; however, Lewis said after digging through the township's recent history, he had not found evidence of any such resolution regarding the SOPAC subsidy in previous years. “I’m not comfortable…based on some sort of nebulous discussion, saying, ‘That’s the stipend,'" said Lewis, who said he preferred a formal resolution.

Trustee Mark Rosner said SOPAC was a "different issue" because the township pays the subsidy monthly. The subsidy always was a separate line item in the budget, although the debt number was never separated out, Rosner said, adding that the situation was complicated by the fact that the stipend was added to the rent from Clearview Cinemas, which SOPAC was originally supposed to "pass through" to the township.