Tepper appointments to School
Budget Review Committee stirs hornet’s nest
By Richard Johnston
MOUNT OLIVE (4/30/09) –
Council President Russ Tepper, over the strenuous
private objections of at least three other Council
members, went ahead and named a committee to review the
failed Board of Education budget. The Council members
objected to some of the members Tepper named.
Added to that, the Board of
Education President Mark Werner, who Tepper had asked to
serve on the committee, declined and refused to name
another board member and an administrator to serve on
the committee. Werner did not return a phone call to
discuss his reasons for not participating. He was on his
way to Boston to attend his daughter’s graduation from
Northwestern University.
Tepper, who is running for
re-election this year in a contested Republican primary
election, named Councilman Alex Roman, Joseph Fleischner,
a defeated candidate in this year’s school board
election, Larry McEntee, a former board member defeated
in a previous election and former Democratic Councilman
Jim Buell, who, this year is running with two other
candidates unopposed for Democratic Council nominations.
Tepper, also committed for
“financial support” the township auditor, Gary Higgins,
who has served in that capacity in other years when the
school budget had been defeated.
Each of Tepper’s nominees had
voiced opposition to the budget during the school board
campaign earlier this month.
Both Buell, when he was a
member of the Council, and Roman, had served as Council
liaison to the Board of Education and regularly attended
board meetings.
In a press release today
Tepper said “I believed that this was a very reasonable
proposal and sincerely wanted to allow the BOE to have
input into our review. Unfortunately, Mr. Werner had
refused to participate, under this structure, in what I
believe will be a critical review of the recently failed
school budget.
“While this is unfortunate,
with the extremely short interval allowed for the
review, the budget review committee will meet without
Mr. Werner’s and the BOE’s participation and develop
recommendations for presentation to the council at our
May 12th meeting.”
A simple response to Mr.
Tepper’s “sincere” desire for board of education
participation on the committee came from a colleague he
will be running with, “yeah, right.”
