2019/20 Budget: $64,319,416
2023/24 Budget: $86,222,274
Increase: $21,902,858 (34.1%)
Nancy Cardone and her board members have made it clear that there is no limit to the amount they are willing to increase spending just so the struggling taxpayers of Lodi CANNOT see any tax reduction.
The Lodi Board of Education should be producing responsible budgets each year with the mindset that State Aid remains flat. Then, when additional State Aid is offered, that serves as relief and offsets the local tax burden. Instead, the Lodi BOE increases the budgets as much as they possible can and then they increase them even more using every single dollar in additional State Aid.
Serious problems with the Lodi BOE’s reckless spending pattern:
Absent the millions in additional State Aid each year, Lodi would have seen its largest tax increases ever.
Lodi has created a snowball effect like you are seeing in Jersey City. When State Aid eventually flattens or is reduced, Lodi taxpayers will either see tax increases in the thousands or major budget cuts.
Serious problems with the Lodi BOE’s budget process:
Lodi’s Business Administrator, Nicholas Cipriano, spent
a short time in Montclair and left a 3 Million Dollar deficit:
Doug Petty, Dennis Frohnapfel, and Nancy Cardone
violated the Open Public Records Act with their refusal to provide the public
with a copy of a “Detailed Budget”.
Doug Petty and Dennis Frohnapfel stated in writing that Board President Nancy Cardone and her team members never once read a detailed budget as they voted for these enormous spending increases.
Summary: Lodi
has seen its largest spending increases in its history. Board members are NOT reading detailed budgets. The administration has illegally withheld detailed
budgets from the public so members of the public cannot monitor for fraud,
waste, and abuse. Doug Petty was responsible
for much of these spending increases probably in a drunken stupor at the Jersey
Shore. Dennis Frohnapfel abruptly left and
took more money than anyone can explain.
Matthew Giacobbe has gone over budget by intentionally manufacturing chaos
and instability with bad legal advice.