Mayor Brad Cohen says the Township will send the schools more PILOT money when new housing strains them. Three other New Jersey towns send money to their districts with enrollment flat, each for its own stated reason.
New apartment and townhouse developments are bringing East Brunswick millions of dollars a year in payments from their owners. Whether the public schools should share in that money now, while enrollment is flat, or only once new students force the district to add teachers or classrooms, was the question underneath Monday’s Township Council meeting.
Mayor Brad Cohen gave his answer over about 25 minutes. Once growth reaches “a critical point” that affects class sizes or requires another school, he said, it will make sense for the Township “to be kicking in more of that pilot money.” Then he added, “But you’re not there yet.”
He spoke after the public comment period had closed, so the residents and Council candidates he was answering could not reply. The full Oct. 12 video is here. Public comment begins at 47:29 and the mayor’s remarks at 1:28:43.
How growth reaches the schools, and how a PILOT changes that
On a conventional East Brunswick tax bill, about 64 cents of every dollar goes to the schools. The Board of Education sets the total it will collect each year, and state law limits how fast that total can grow, generally to 2 percent, with no added allowance for new construction.
So a new taxable building does not hand the schools new money automatically. It widens the base. The same school levy is spread across more property, which lowers what each existing owner pays or gives the Board room to raise spending within its limit at less cost to each household.
A payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, changes that. The land is still taxed and the schools get their usual share of it. The building is exempt. Its owner pays the Township an annual service charge instead, of which 95 percent stays with the Township and 5 percent goes to the county. None goes to the school district.
The district still collects its full levy. Its audited financial report says amounts forgiven under these agreements “must effectively be recouped from other taxpayers.” A PILOT does not cut the school budget. It keeps the building’s value out of the base that supports that budget and turns the growth into Township revenue. Township officials have argued that the projects would not have been built without the agreements.
“The schools always get their budget,” Cohen said. “The question is how it’s being paid for.”
What was asked
Three of the seven people who spoke during public comment were the Republican candidates for Council, and two of them raised the schools’ share.
Girish Vazirani said, “We are not against development.” He said about 230 students live in PILOT developments, which at roughly $20,000 each “represents 4.6 million in annual school costs,” and called for regular joint planning by the Township and the Board and a review of the legal options for directing a share of PILOT revenue to the schools.
Mina Abdo cited “an article on October 9th, Eyes on EB,” on the district’s count of about 230 students, and qualified the same arithmetic: “That doesn’t mean these developments added $4.6 million in new expenses, but it raises an important question.” Abdo asked for formal talks with the Board about “sustainable ways to support our schools without placing more pressure on current homeowners.”
Vincent Le Blon said Township police are working without a contract. Reading from what he described as an advertisement for the District Walk townhomes putting a buyer’s PILOT savings at $200,000 or more, he asked why the Township agrees to 30-year terms. Eyes on EB could not locate that text. Council records show a superior officers’ contract was approved Sept. 28. We could not confirm the status of the rank-and-file contract.
The mayor’s answer
Cohen said candidates making their case at a Council meeting “is not new” and is “their right,” then told them, “You weren’t actually involved in what’s going on in the township the last 10 years.”
His case rests on enrollment. He said it has stayed between about 8,000 and 8,200 for a decade. State fall counts show 8,084 students in 2015-16 and 7,980 in 2025-26.
He rejected the $4.6 million calculation. “That is a false argument because the fixed costs remain the same. We didn’t add a new school. We didn’t add new teachers,” he said. Neither side has documented what those students actually cost.
He argued the students help the district, because without them its state aid “likely would have dropped.” Enrollment is one input to that aid among several, and yearly changes are capped. East Brunswick’s aid rose 6 percent this year, the most the state allowed, to $39.6 million.
He also said the district could educate students well at lower cost with tighter budgeting. “It’s not all about the money,” he said.
On scale, Cohen put added PILOT revenue at about $2 million a year more than before he took office, against a school budget of about $210 million. “It’s laughable,” he said. Township budgets show receipts rising from $2.1 million in 2019 to $3.8 million in 2025. He said the money “depends upon the occupancy” and can fall, and he called it “unfair” to “compare us to places like Woodbridge or Piscataway,” which he said have collected PILOT money for decades.
Flat enrollment is not the same as room in every building
The district’s crowding claims concern two buildings. On Sept. 24 its business administrator said that, measured by “the square footage that the state uses,” the high school is over capacity by 463 students and Churchill Junior High by about 650.
Cohen called the high school figure one of “the most ridiculous statistics.” A second published measure points his way: the district’s 2024-25 financial report lists the building’s capacity as 2,724 and its enrollment as 2,128. The two measures may not be calculated the same way and the district has not published its work, so 463 is neither confirmed nor disproved.
Cohen did not address Churchill. There the same report lists a capacity of 1,432 and enrollment of 2,077, a difference of 645, close to the district’s figure.
Three towns that share, and their enrollment
The idea was already on the public record in East Brunswick. At the Sept. 24 Board of Education meeting, Board Attorney Matthew Giacobbe said towns “can give a portion of the pilot money to the school district” by agreement with the school board. He described an Essex County township his firm represents, which he did not name, that he said gives its district $1.3 million a year for 30 years, with no restrictions on its use, to offset the cost of students from one development. Board President Dr. Marianne Tanious said Board leaders had “raised our concerns around pilots and their impact on schools” with state Sen. Vin Gopal’s office. The Board took no action on PILOT sharing that night.
Eyes on EB compared three New Jersey arrangements with each district’s state fall enrollment counts.
Cedar Grove has paid its district a fixed $1.2 million a year in PILOT money since July 2022, booked as unrestricted revenue. Enrollment was 1,583 the fall before the payments began and 1,586 last fall, and has stayed between about 1,540 and 1,606 for 11 years. The township tied the amount to students, not to growth in general: its 2022 letter based the figure on per-pupil cost multiplied by the number of students living in one development. The letter says the township “is not required” to pay, and no contract was found.
Woodbridge enrolled 13,654 students in 2015-16 and 13,425 last fall, the lowest of the 11 years. Its mayor told a state board that the township shares about 25 percent of its PILOT revenue, “not officially to the penny.” It transferred $6.6 million in the 2024-25 budget year. That money pays debt on school construction, not programs or salaries, and Woodbridge’s PILOT revenue is roughly eight times East Brunswick’s.
Princeton approved a 20-year agreement in May 2025 to pass its district what remains of one development’s PILOT after debt payments, tied to facilities costs. Enrollment was 3,787 that school year and 3,683 last fall. We have not confirmed that a payment has been made.
In none of the three did money wait for districtwide enrollment to rise. In none was it described as a share of growth meant to expand programs. Each was tied to something narrower: students from a development, building debt or facilities costs.
What sharing would take in East Brunswick
A 1941 state law lets a town that shares its school district’s borders transfer surplus or anticipated revenue to the board, one adopted budget at a time. Its text does not say how the money may be used, and we found no state guidance on using it for a recurring PILOT share. Cohen has said this year that PILOT money for schools can go only to capital projects.
Any contribution would have to be made up in the municipal budget through taxes, surplus or cuts. Cohen said in July that PILOT revenue helps hold municipal tax increases under 1 percent.
School officials have voiced a caution of their own. The Board’s attorney has recommended that such money go to long-lived capital projects because PILOT agreements end.
Eyes on EB found no comparable arrangement in Township records and no document showing one was weighed, which does not mean it was not.
Warnsdorfer: ‘It’s the same thing’
“And we’re giving you money anyway,” Cohen said. The example officials have cited is the 2025 repaving of the Warnsdorfer Elementary School parking lot.
Cohen said the Township had money left in its paving program, asked the schools whether they needed help, and was asked to repave the lot. Responding to complaints that the work “came out of a bond and it didn’t come out of the pilot,” he asked, “Does it really make a difference if we took it out on a bond at our interest rates” and used PILOT money, “which goes into the general fund, to pay that bond back? It’s the same thing.” He did not say outright that the job was financed with borrowed money.
Earlier statements tied the project more directly to PILOT money. In May, a Council member said the $275,000 job was done “as per what the municipality is allowed to do with the pilot money.” On Sept. 28, Council President Dana Zimbicki said of about $1.6 million in added PILOT revenue, “With that $1.6 million, we did work with the Board of Ed to do some parking lot pavement.”
What is documented is narrower. School board minutes from November 2025 record that the Township repaved the lot and thank it for a “generous financial contribution.” On Oct. 8 the district’s business administrator said “it was not a pilot” and described leftover paving-contract money, which is consistent with the mayor’s account. Eyes on EB has not found a Township record identifying the source of the money or confirming the cost. PILOT revenue is not tracked separately within the general fund, so the repayment Cohen describes cannot be traced.
The question still open
Zimbicki, who spoke before the mayor, disputed the district’s count of five development areas. “There’s three,” she said. No one responded to Vazirani’s proposal for joint planning, to Le Blon’s question about 30-year terms, or to a resident’s request, echoed by Abdo, for a televised candidate debate.
The mayor’s position is that the schools’ share should follow need: more students, larger classes, another building. Vazirani and Abdo raised school funding and joint planning and asked for talks now. The broader question was not fully addressed Monday: whether a growing town’s schools should gain from that growth even when enrollment is flat, to improve programs and facilities and not only to keep pace. State law leaves that largely to the Township and the Board. Eyes on EB found no record that the two have formally taken it up.
