Island park superintendent details expected revenue for 2012-13

At a special Island Park Board of Education meeting on April 17, Superintendent Rosmarie Bovino detailed the sources and amounts of revenue the district expects to help fund the 2012-13 budget of $34.6 million, $30 million of which is expected to come from property taxes.

The district is expecting to receive $1.6 million in state aid, and it will use its undesignated fund balance of $1.2 million as well as a handful of smaller revenues.

Bovino noted that the formulas that determine state aid for school districts have been frozen at 2009-10 rates. Island Park property owners’ ability to pay taxes is rated highly by the state, she said, and as a result, state aid for the district has been decreasing for the past three years. For the upcoming school year, it will drop by more than $17,000.

“So with rising costs, mandates and nondiscretionary expenses and reduced state aid,” Bovino explained, “the district must use fund balances and reserves to make up the difference between the tax levy increase and the total increase in costs. Borrowing from fund balance and reserves, however, cannot be sustained.”

She warned that while the district could tap into its fund balance for this year and in the near future, an increase in the tax levy beyond the 2 percent cap mandated by the state would eventually be necessary.

Bovino also said that the expected increase in the tax levy would be 1.97 percent rather than the previously announced 2.01 percent, due to a lower cost of replacing two buses. The expected cost was $110,000, but the district was informed that the actual cost would only be $99,200, which reduced the proposed budget by $10,800.

If adopted by the Board of Education on April 30, the spending plan will need a simple majority to pass when the community votes on it on May 15. It is more than $1 million larger than the current budget, but in order to keep up with rising mandated costs, such as the Employee Retirement System and Social Security, the district must cut more than $550,000 in non-mandated costs. The proposed cuts include the elimination of two teaching positions at the Francis X. Hegarty Elementary School and the elimination of the curriculum director’s position, one clerical and one custodial job.