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"My fear is we're going to have to make some programmatic changes," said Croton-Harmon Board of Education Vice President Giuseppina Miller. "So, at this point, the fear is what we have to cut is going to affect the kids."
Croton-Harmon School Board members will have a choice between several different trajectories for the 2013-2014 budget. Cuts are based on a rollover budget, or the previous year's budget plus growth expenses, such as salary and pension increases.
School board members could choose to use the maximum allowable tax levy increase and stay within the cap, which was the recommendation of Croton-Harmon Superintendent Edward Fuhrman at a recent work session.
Board members also could choose to increase the tax levy closer to 2 percent, a middle ground between the maximum allowable increase and no increase. However, a smaller tax levy increase would mean larger cuts to the budget. School district officials estimate a 2 percent levy increase would necessitate around $1.2 million in budget cuts.
Any budget that raises the tax levy 3.1 percent or less needs a simple majority to pass. Budgets that "override," the cap, need a 60 percent "supermajority" of voters to pass. Miller said that although this is an option for the board, it's not an option it would pursue every year.
Miller said from this point on, the budget will be an, "ongoing discussion," and the Croton-Harmon budget season schedule is available here. At the next Croton-Harmon School Board meeting, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Croton-Harmon High School, board members likely will discuss how they'd like the administration to plan the budget. That is, whether they'd like the administration to prepare a budget based on the maximum tax levy increase, somewhere in the middle or to try and override the tax levy.
The budget is voted on by the public May 21. If a budget fails to receive 50 percent approval twice, school districts are subject to a contingency budget, which mandates the budget remain flat from year to year. If this were to occur, $1.8 million would need to be cut from the $45 million Croton-Harmon Schools rollover budget.
"I don't think whether we choose to do 2 percent or 3 is going to make a difference," Miller said. "It's going to matter what we end up cutting, that's going to make a difference on whether the budget will pass or not."
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