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Partly Cloudy School officials focus on finances
Discussion about proposed budget, tax levy continues at Board of Ed meeting
As school budget talks continue, school officials discussed the district’s proposed tax levy for the 2015-16 school year at the March 10 Board of Education meeting.
The district’s chief operating officer, Michael DeVito, again presented a tax levy of $99.3 million, a 3.19 percent increase over this year’s levy and the maximum allowable under the state tax cap.
The tentative budget total now stands at $131.4 million, an increase of only 1.07 percent over the current spending plan. DeVito said that the proposed tax levy is part of his plan to wean the district off using its reserve funds.
“If we continue to use reserve funds, we will approach what’s called fiscal stress — and we’ve already been cited for that,” DeVito said, referring to a state audit report that was released last month. “No matter what version [of the budget] we present, we’re going to ask the community for the max.”
Michael Abneri, a parent, questioned the budget’s bottom line and the proposed tax levy. “Just because you have a cap doesn’t mean you have to hit it,” he said.
DeVito and Schools Superintendent David Weiss explained that the district has budgeted a tax levy well below the allowable maximum in previous years, which is part of the reason it has relied increasingly on reserve funds. That, they said, is no longer an option.
“It could have been lower this year if we had gone higher last year,” Weiss said of the levy. “Until we get to a sustainable budget, the suggestion is that we take advantage of the revenue that’s available to us to sustain it.”
According to DeVito, the district has kept the levy low over the past two years because school officials were mindful of the financial burden Hurricane Sandy had created for the community. He said that the maximum allowable increase in the levy last year was 3.75 percent, and the increase budget preparers settled on was 3.24 percent. In the two previous years, the district had the option to go above 5 percent but chose not to.
“We gave up some of that money, and $500,000 last year, to keep the tax levy low,” he said. “Now we’re recommending we go to the max for the next four years because after four years’ time, we’re still at a million-dollar gap [between revenue and expenses].”
