Posted: 14 Apr 2010 04:55 PM PDT

By Aliyah Shahid/For The Star-Ledger

April 14, 2010, 8:01PM

SAYREVILLE -- The Sayreville council has introduced a budget that calls for a 5 percent tax hike, furlough days for borough employees and the elimination of up to 45 part-time jobs to close a $2.3 million shortfall.

The hike means the average homeowner with a house valued at the borough average of $144,000 would pay an additional $78.77 in municipal taxes. That raises the municipal portion of the tax bill to $1,613, said Wayne Kronowski, the borough's chief financial officer.

The tax increase is due to a loss of $2.3 million in state aid, said Jeff Bertrand, the borough's business administrator. The spending plan is $189,000 less than last year, and calls for using the borough's entire $472,000 surplus. The budget calls for no layoffs of full-time workers. However, borough employees, except those in the police department, will be required to take five unpaid days off. And 40 to 45 part-time positions will be eliminated, Bertrand said.

Republican councilmembers Paula Siarkiewicz, Ken Kelly, Frank Bella and Nicholas Perrette voted in favor of the $50.5 million spending plan on Monday, while Republican Councilman David Kaiserman and Democratic Councilwoman Lisa Eicher voted against it.

A public hearing on the budget will be held May 10.

"Our concern is that it's bad enough this year, and we predict a $1 million hole going into next year," Bertrand said. "…Right now we're trying to set a compliance level this year and put ourselves in good position for next year."

Further budget reductions include reducing $95,000 in landfill costs, $98,000 in legal fees, and eliminating the borough's Conservation Corps, a group of about 25 students and several adult volunteers who work to maintain public land. The move would save Sayreville $97,000.

Several Conservation Corps. members and former councilman Stanley Drwal, who formed the group in 2004, protested the move at Monday's meeting. Drwal argued eliminating the program would mean losing trained personnel and letting equipment to lay idle.

"Why is this the only program being cut in the borough," Drwal asked. "It's the only program that has zero increases and has brought in tens of thousands of dollars in grants, free equipment and training."

The borough pays young adults, ages 16 to 20, $8 an hour for eight weeks over the summer. Projects typically include nature preservation, like picking up trash on borough roads and building fences around recently planted trees.

Councilwoman Eicher suggested making a 5 percent cut across the entire budget, which she said would save the borough at least $180,000. Councilman Bella agreed.

"We should share the pain equally, whether through tighter budgets or reductions of costs," said Bella. "We should touch departments that haven't been touched."

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History repeats for former re-enactor turned part-time ... - Dallas Morning News

Posted: 14 Apr 2010 02:03 PM PDT

On his short list of favorite jobs, David Day aced it right out of college. At Dallas Heritage Village (then known as Old City Park), he demonstrated the skills of a pioneer potter – shaping clay at a kick wheel and firing pots in an underground kiln he had to climb down into to load.

That '90s interlude, awash in simplicity, gave way to a patchwork of more adult roles: husband, father, studio artist for hire, salesman of real estate.

But the mystique of 19th-century folk art never dimmed for Day, 38, who last summer reintroduced a collection of hand-thrown pottery, sold through Redenta's Garden in Dallas and Arlington.

"There's a certain humility in making everyday objects, then seeing people use them and integrate them into their lives," says the Carrollton-raised artist. He had been unaware of his calling until he took a ceramics course at the University of Dallas and found "I could get lost in it for hours."

Unlike his days of pioneer re-enactment, Day whirls these pots on an electrically powered wheel. Yet he pays ample tribute to early Americana with other old-time details. Each pot is stamped by weight and city of origin. More subtly, his dense, hotly fired pieces emit the sound of quality: They ring at the flick of a finger, never thud.

At his studio in The Cedars, south of Dallas City Hall – once his combined workspace and home – Day stores pottery in various stages of completion. He buys custom dirt from an Austin supplier – a red terra cotta quieted in a whitewash of another, liquid clay – for pieces ranging from 1 ½ to 12 pounds. Lately, he's tinkering with a prototype that combines white clay and a moss-green wash for a weathered-concrete effect.

"I want to dirty it up a bit," he says, unsatisfied so far. "I don't want these things to look like new tennis shoes."

Ironically, he stirs up most of his mud miles away from his studio, inside the Richardson house he shares with his artist wife, Rebecca, and their 5-year-old son, Jasper.

From his sunroom in the Canyon Creek neighborhood, Day hand-throws up to 20 pots at a sitting, all variations on two historical shapes: the first, a lean-profiled long tom; the second a stout, shallow planter. The funnel-shaped long tom was devised for plants whose roots plunge straight down, while the more squatty form accommodates plants whose roots develop horizontally.

Day calls himself a weekend potter – without regret. "I definitely know I'll keep my hands in clay the rest of my life. But I do this just for fun," he says. "If it's your living, it gets a bit trickier."

He used to feel otherwise. For years, he and his wife produced ceramic bowls, hand-painted mugs and decorative tiles for La Madeleine restaurants and other companies. Despite the Bohemian splendor of that time – sleeping in the front of the studio, working in back – he says it was no recipe for stability.

These days, the family man prefers to concentrate on real estate sales, while Rebecca, a University of Texas-trained artist, works as a graphic designer for an architectural firm.

Come the weekend, Day returns to the soothing spin of wet clay, to invoke, if only on a modest scale, the time-honored merger of utility and art.

"This is a good fit for me," he says.

Diane Reischel is a Dallas freelance writer.

garden@dallasnews.com

Where to buy

A small selection of David Day's hand-thrown, terra-cotta flowerpots is for sale at Redenta's Garden locations in Old East Dallas and Arlington.

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Posted: 14 Apr 2010 10:25 PM PDT

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