Advance Robbinsville
MAY 2019
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School budget bounced Board of Education to raise tax rate after state nixes plan to provide more relief By RoB Anthes
ranthes@communitynews.org
Alexia Guiducci and Julia Castellano hold candles during an April 2, 2019 vigil for Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old Robbinsville resident murdered after entering a car she mistook for a rideshare vehicle. In the aftermath, her family has campaigned for enhanced safety measures for rideshare ser vices, such as Uber. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Movement springs from tragedy Murder of 2015 RHS alumna leads to #whatsmyname campaign By Kevin KunZMAnn Seymour Josephson took the stage at West Lake Park in downtown Robbinsville April 2, facing a few hundred silent onlookers and a dozen national broadcast cameramen. He collected himself for moment before speaking, as those moments had
recently become scant. Just four earlier, on March 29, Josephson’s daughter Samantha, 21, was enjoying her last semester at the University at South Carolina. A day later, on March 30, he was trying to grasp her horrific death at the hands of a stranger. And just the day before, Josephson was at her campus in Columbia, South Carolina, facing another group of onlookers and cameras and speaking on a bill that could only hope to stop the thing that happened to his younger daughter—his Sami—from
happening again. In three days, Josephson’s and his family’s lives had become an unimaginable cycle of grieving, shock and anger. As best he could, he explained this to the family, friends and neighbors at his daughter’s vigil. “I’m telling you, this is nothing you would ever want to do,” Josephson said. “You don’t want to go through this.” Samantha was a lifelong resident of Robbinsville, with a list of friends that likely makes up a good portion of her small hometown. She was a political sci-
ence major at USC, two months away from earning her bachelor’s degree and preparing for courses at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, where she was offered a scholarship just months before. Her standing as a disciplined, inspiring student was offset by her reputation as a fun-loving, clumsy girl with a penchant for pranks and memorable stories her loved ones described as “Sami-isms.” More than two dozen friends from Robbinsville and See JOSEPHSON, Page 12
Members of the Robbinsville Township Board of Education thought they had put the process behind them when they approved a budget March 18 that included a reduction in taxes for residents. They were wrong. Two days later, the state Department of Education rejected the budget, saying it did not include enough of a contribution from Robbinsville’s taxpayers. So, the school district administration and the school board went back to the drawing board, combing through line items to find ways to stabilize the district while not asking too much of residents. They presented the result during a special Board of Education meeting April 2: a budget that would satisfy state mandates by raising the tax rate 1.64 percent. Counterintuiatively, this would equal a $14 decrease in taxes compared to last year for the averaged assessed home valued at $375,000. The funny math is thanks to an increase in assessed valuations for the township, district officials said. The school board was scheduled to meet again to approve the final budget April 29, which was after press time. It was See BUDGET, Page 11
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