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And They Call Themselves Financial Experts?
Mr. Charles Garafano has chosen to denigrate Bobbie Rivere's 23 years of service on a school board by claiming that she was responsible for raising budget expenditures by 330 percent. When asked where he got the figures, he said he was given them by a reliable source, but they are fact. Mrs. Emily Ingram stated that this represents a yearly budget increase of 14.2 percent. On campaign literature portraying Rivere as a windup toy, newspaper sources were quoted using the time span May, 1974 to May 2001.
Apparently, accountant Garofano and CPA Ingram never heard of compounding. If an item increases by 330 percent over 27 years, that is equivalent to an annual increase of 4.6 percent compounded annually. If something were to increase 14.2 percent per year, compounded annually, it would result in a total increase of 3,600 percent after 27 years. In this same time frame, the Department of Labor statistics reports that the CPI rose 380 percent. Therefore, Merrick budgets rose less than the rate of inflation. In fact, Merrick had the third lowest rate of annual increases in Nassau County in the 1990s.
Mr. Garofano and Mrs. Ingram are either distorting figures to win an election at all costs or they are not astute in mathematics. They have acted in a slipshod manner by relying on someone else's incorrect assumptions and presenting them as fact. Perhaps fuzzy mathematics or lack of knowledge is the reason Jackson Township taxes increased 32 percent in the first year of this administration. In any event, they should not be representing the people of Jackson.
Morris Liebman,
Jackson
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