58.0°,
A Few Clouds Turning to their schools' reserves?
Tax cap, state aid cuts force East Rockaway, Lynbrook
For several local school districts, balancing budgets is becoming a daunting challenge. Higher pension costs, a loss of state aid and a possible state tax cap have many school officials looking to tighten their spending plans.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo released his first budget proposal on Feb. 1, and districts are being told to tap into their reserve funds to make up for the possible, impending state aid cutbacks and a proposed 2 percent tax cap. Many administrators say they have few options for dealing with increasing costs.
“The [tax cap] movement is not friendly to school districts, and it is something that we have as our No. 1 agenda item,” Lynbrook Superintendent Santo Barbarino said at a recent Board of Education meeting. The cap, Barbarino added, would tie the district’s budgetary hands, since it would require that at least 60 percent of voters approve a budget that includes a tax levy increase of more than 2 percent.
The tax cap legislation, which has been approved by the State Senate, was not part of the governor’s budget, and is instead a separate issue, explained newly elected Assemblyman Brian Curran (R-Lynbrook). “Long Island, particularly, is getting whacked with regard to school aid,” Curran said. “That’s the first battle we have to fight … and the tax cap is after that.”
If the tax cap becomes law, the district would likely have to use its capital reserves. “The rhetoric out there right now from the governor is about the districts using reserves to get us through this tax cap,” said the Lynbrook district’s assistant superintendent for business, Dr. Melissa Burak. “The problem with a tax cap, even though we have been so tight on our budget over these past several years, keeping in mind that the economy is going to get worse, is when you use all of the reserves that you have. And at the end of the fiscal year, you don’t have the money to then replenish those reserves. Somewhere it’s going to die out and a tax cap is still going to be in existence, and then what do you do?”
