District dipping into savings

Salaries and benefits make up close to 90 percent of the increase in Malverne’s school budget for 2011-12. That leaves $250,000 of the nearly $1.8 million increase to spend on everything else: programs, clubs, field trips, athletics, supplies, equipment and more.

One way in which district administrators are trying to balance the budget is by using reserve funds — a method that is frightening both to them and to Board of Education trustees who are concerned about depleting the district’s savings.

“Every year you can’t save any money, you can’t replace your reserves,” schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund said at the board’s April 5 budget workshop. “We can’t be penny wise and pound foolish” by using reserves to supplement everything.

The district has about $1.3 million in unrestricted reserves, and plans to use some of it defray taxes; the proposed tax levy as of April 5 was 3.89 percent. For the 2010-11 budget, the district used $1.7 million in fund balance for that purpose.

But aside from using some of the reserves, Hunderfund said administrators have worked hard to whittle down their proposed budget increase from 13 percent to 3.89 percent — what he called “a gargantuan task.” They plan to reduce the increase even further, despite having what Hunderfund labeled a “bare-bones budget.”

“Our problem is a rock and a hard place,” he said, “because we really cannot find more money any place.” Still, Hunderfund added, he and his team — which includes Deputy Superintendent Richard Banyon, Assistant Superintendent Spiro Colaitis and Business Administrator Tom McDaid — would attempt to further refine the budget before presenting it to the board for adoption on April 12.

Of the 340 line items in the budget, a combined total of 250 have been reduced or are at zero: the remaining lines are programs and personnel, according to McDaid. While Board President Dr. Patrick Coonan admitted this leaves few places from which to take money, he told administrators they still have some work ahead of them.