Merrick district begins budget process

The Merrick School District held its first budget hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 7, and the Board of Education and the central administration, with the input of parents, began their efforts to trim the budget.

As of press time, the school district still had not set its preliminary budget total, according to Christine Grucci, the assistant superintendent in charge of business, but the two sides will work to lower their budget-to-budget increase to about 2 percent, in accordance with the tax-levy cap imposed by the state.

The current budget of $42.3 million represented a 3.3 percent increase in expenditures over the 2010-2011 budget.

The district will hold budget meetings on Tuesday, March 6, and Tuesday, March 20, which will be open to the public. In the preliminary budget figures given on Feb. 7, the district had not planned any major cuts to programs or full-time teaching positions, but did cut $100,000 in budgeted salary for substitute teachers. The district will also save $96,000 as a result of Governor Cuomo relinquishing the Metropolitan Commuter Transit Tax.

And the district will save about $83,000 in salary for its superintendent, as Dr. Ranier Melucci, who has served as Merrick superintendent for the past nine years, will retire in June. The district will also save $100,000 on a BOCES administrative charge.

All budgetary cuts are preliminary, said Grucci, until the board adopts its budget in April, after which it will need to be passed by Merrick residents in a majority vote.