The Tuckahoe Union Free School District has found a way to squeeze its $32.5 million proposed budget under the state-imposed tax cap, but it would require appropriating nearly $1 million from reserves.
On April 3, the district proposed its budget for fiscal year 2017-2018. The $32.5 million spending plan would be put to public vote on May 16, and, if approved, would go into effect on July 1.
This year, the New York state ceiling on increases to the tax levy—known as the tax cap—for school districts is 0.8 percent. The cap requires the school district to collect less than 1 percent more in tax dollars than it did in the 2016-2017 fiscal year. However, the district plans to increase its spending by 1.85 percent, or about $590,000, from the previous year.
To compensate for the slight allowable levy increase and the district’s projected spending increases, the proposed budget would appropriate $995,000 from fund balance, which Schools Superintendent Carl Albano estimates will sit at about $5.5 million by the end of the current fiscal year. That would include the state-required fund balance, which must be at least 4 percent of the district’s annual budget.
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Much of that increase would go to fund salaries for four new special education teachers. Across the district, the salary allotment for those teachers would increase by about 32 percent from the previous fiscal year, equating to $448,282 in new expenses.
But the district would also reduce its spending on BOCES services by about $140,000.
Lee Lew, director of finance and facilities for the school district, said the demand for special education teachers in the district has increased over the last several years.
Overall, teaching expenses would cost the district $702,000 more compared to the previous fiscal year. Another larger expense in that category is interscholastic activities, which would increase by $81,000—17.4 percent—from the current budget. That allotment would fund nine new sports teams at modified, freshman, JV and varsity levels, as well as five new coaching and supervision stipends. Some of that increase will pay for the additional $27,500 in salary costs for Austin Goldberg, the new athletic director who was hired last year.
The district appropriated about $560,000 from the fund balance for the 2016-2017 budget, but estimates that it will add more than one-third of that budgeted number back into the fund balance. In the two prior fiscal years, the district had appropriated more than $1 million per year to balance the budget; but the district’s fund balance grew from $3.1 million to $5.5 million over that period. Lew attributed the steady increase in fund balance to the district’s conservative budgeting.
Albano estimated the same kind of return on the proposed budget. “We’re very confident that we will be able to replenish what we’re using,” he said.
The Board of Education is scheduled to adopt the proposed budget on April 18 and hold a public hearing on May 8 before putting the budget to public vote on Tuesday, May 16.
At that time, voters will also be able to vote on a referendum to purchase 110 Ridge St., a private property adjacent to William E. Cottle Elementary School, for the purpose of relocating the district’s administration offices. If that purchase is approved, the district would pay $662,000 from the fund balance to purchase the property. The district had originally agreed to buy the property for $660,000 with voter approval, but the special vote, originally scheduled last month, was delayed by a snowstorm.
Albano added that the district’s estimated year-end $5.5 million fund balance takes into account the purchase of the Ridge Street property.
