50.0°,
Overcast Budget workshops conclude
School board considers cuts to preserve program
With fiscal shortfalls threatening school programs county- and statewide, a half-dozen or so spectators clustered in a doorway for lack of seating on March 23 as the Baldwin School District Board of Education conducted its third and final public budget work session.
“You want to know if these are tough times?” an attendee observed before the meeting, scanning the swelling crowd of 60 or so people outside the district office meeting room. “In past years there would be four or five people at these things.”
The subject of the meeting was “Transportation and Undistributed Components,” the final installment in a series of budget discussions that covered the instructional component of the budget as well as support and community services. Making ends meet in the wake of a nearly $2.5 million loss in state funding was paramount throughout the forums.
In the past, the district has derived 22 percent of its funding from the state, 71 percent from the tax levy on Baldwin residents and 7 percent from other sources (see sidebar, page 6). This year, however, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget indicates that cuts can be expected for the next two or three years. Since a reduction in state aid has historically led to increased property taxes, the administrators, parents and concerned citizens who packed the work sessions faced a thorny choice: raise taxes or cut programs?
A preliminary version of the budget — the board has been refining its proposal over the last several months — indicated a potential property tax increase of 8.5 percent if no cuts were made. Since then the board has been whittling down the number. In the proposal detailed last week, the tax increase had dwindled to 3.5 percent (about 51 cents a day for the typical Baldwin resident, the board estimated) and no programs had been cut. “The proposal maintains the program pretty much intact,” Superintendent Dr. James Mapes observed.
(Cuomo’s budgetary revisions, announced over the weekend, will be considered in the next draft of the proposal.)
