At the February 2 Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Charles Sulc and Deputy Superintendent Alan Adcock unveiled, the first part of the 2012-2013 budget: New York State mandated spending which includes pension costs, building maintenance, daily operations, and legal costs.
The current legislation allows school districts to increase taxes by only two percent, unless a super majority of 60.1 percent is achieved on the budget vote. In the district’s nearly 45 years of budget voting, this has only happened three times; it is very unlikely to occur, especially given the current fiscal austerity.
“There is a lot of misinformation associated with the tax cap. The reality is that it is progressive, each and every year the impact will continue to be felt; creating a major nightmare,” Superintendent Charles Sulc said.
The two spent a great deal of time explaining the direct implications that the tax cap will have on the district this year and in the years to follow.
“This is a bill that penalizes school districts,” Sulc said.
These mandated costs are non-negotiable, meaning that, nothing in this part of the budget is set to change. However, no instructional costs have been dealt with in this first part of the budget, creating a concern in many taxpayers.
“Our mandated costs are rising at a rate far above two percent,” Deputy Superintendent Alan Adcock said. “This will create a problem to fund programs in the future.”
This may create a problem going forward for future budgets; however, the district aims to use reserves to offset the hard times it is facing.
“The key ingredient here is what we can do over the next couple of years to modify what we are already doing,” Adcock said.
However, the district is not planning on receiving any further aid from New York State. “There is no magic pill,” Sulc said, “There is no more state aid coming, but there will be no program elimination this year.”
The district has made it clear that programs cannot be guaranteed to be maintained after this year. “We can only make this promise for this year, we cannot hold this promise going forward,” Sulc said.
The meeting, held in the traditional Board Room B, was packed with residents, MFT Union members, and other school personnel to the point where a decision was made to turn away approximately thirty people from the meeting.
“Instead of moving to another room, you turned away thirty taxpayers who have the right to attend these meetings,” one resident said. “These are people that came here, wanting to be informed, who you turned away, and aren’t going to come back again now. And come May those residents are probably not going to vote up your budget.”
The Board responded to the comment, by stating that it was an executive error made on Central Administration’s part. Board president, Mary Ann Fisher stated that she aimed to take appropriate precautions to ensure this does not happen at future board meetings.
Much of the 2012-2013 budget and budgetary cuts that will be made are still being determined by Central Administration though each and every area of the budget has been looked at.
“There have to be lay-offs as this budget unfolds,” Sulc said.
At this time, no number could be given as to how many district employees will be laid off. The instructional portion of the 2012-2013 budget will be unveiled to the public on tonight (Thursday, March 1) at 8 PM.