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Mostly Cloudy Oceanside school district unveils higher budget for 2010-11
Proposed increase of $2.5 million brings total to over $128 million
On Feb. 1, the Oceanside School District’s administration began presenting their budget for the 2010-11 school year. This year’s proposed budget of $128 million amounts to a total of $2.5 million higher than last year.
The proposed budget, which holds the line on most items, is $2,502,642, or 1.98 percent higher than the 2009-10 budget of just over $126 million, and was touted by Oceanside Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown as one of the lowest budget increases on Long Island.
Observant residents may remember that the budget that passed last year was actually around $124 million. But this year’s total includes the budget for the district’s Department of Community Activities. DOCA is not funded by taxpayers, but the district decided to include the DOCA money in its total budget this year following a recommendation from state auditors.
“[Putting together the budget] was difficult, but I think we were able to put it together because we plan two or three years at a time,” said Brown. “And by planning two or three years at a time, we knew this year and next year were going to be difficult years, so we were able to use some of our fund balance to offset some of the increases.”
While the budget holds the line in many areas, the biggest increases come in areas that are not in the district’s control — contractual salary increases and state-mandated expenses.
The district had to contribute an extra $478,783, or 46.9 percent, to the Employees Retirement System and $400,000 — 9 percent — to the Teacher’s Retirement System. The increases were mandated by the state retirement systems that the district has no control over.
“The reason it’s gone up is that [the retirement systems] lost their money in the stock market,” Brown said. “They get their money from two sources: investments and contributions from local districts and governments. If they’re not making money on investments, because the stock market did poorly, then they have to make it up by increase the contributions of local governments.”
Overall, employee benefits increased by nearly $1.2 million, or 18.4 percent of the total budget.
