WEST MILFORD The auditor hired by the township to find reductions in the school budget admits there are few areas for cuts to be made. To add to that, the council has only until May 21 to install its amendments. Because of the defeat of the school budget at the polls, the council must take responsibility for finding places to cut the budget. The school administrators then take that trimmed down figure and turn it into a workable budget. The same scenario arose last year. With the advice of its appointed auditor, Matt Donohue, the council cut $300,000 from the school budget. Donohue was called in again this year to review the budget and identify areas where reductions can be made. He appeared before the council on Wednesday, May 9, to present his report. Donohue said, “My approach is to look at areas of the budget where there may be actual over-budgeted items in the line items and look in the general fund for any hidden or available surpluses.” Despite successfully finding ways to find cuts in last year’s budget Donohue admits it was inevitable this year would prove more difficult: “My experience is when you come back a second year, unfortunately it indicates a somewhat diminishing return.” Donohue praised Steve Cea, the schools’ business administrator. “It’s not just the old approach of taking last year’s number and adding five percent to it. There’s actually been serious effort put into the budget.” Donohue also believes the school administrators took some of his recommendations last year and implemented them into their budget for this year. “They looked at what I did last year and kind of anticipated if I were to come back again what would I be looking at,” said Donohue. “They’ve somewhat beat me to the punch to tell you the truth.” One area Donohue found for savings was in the food service fund. The budget provided for a subsidy of $41,640 to be put into that account despite the fact that there is surplus of $181,357 already in there. “It seems to me with that much money on hand as an unreserved retained earning, it didn’t make sense to be budgeting an additional subsidy to it,” he said. Donohue advised the school board is projecting a loss of $50,000 for this year due to a change in their no longer serving “junk food.” He also said he’d only had two days to review the budget and there were some other areas where he might be able to identify small cuts. The council requested he take a further look into the figures and report back to them. A joint public meeting with the school board and the board of education took place yesterday, May 17, to thrash out the final details, after this paper went to press. The school budget was voted on by the public on April 17 and was rejected by just three votes, 0.1 percent of the total votes cast. That budget proposed an average increase of 3.1 percent which would have resulted in an increase of $160 for property taxpayers on a home valuation of $130,000.