By KEITH GRANT
The $86.8 million proposed budget that residents will vote on next Tuesday, June 3, is nearly 6 percent bigger than the current budget that voters OKed a year ago. However, with increasing state mandates, decreasing state aid and new assessment figures, many school-district residents can expect to see their school taxes increase by more than 10 percent if the budget is approved.
A hard average is hard to come by, district officials have said, since reassessment in Nassau County has shaken up the previously more-predictable process. But the schools superintendent acknowledged last week that he expects the average tax increase to ultimately fall just below 10 percent.
Meanwhile, four residents are vying for two available seats on the Long Beach Board of Education. Board president Gina Guma is not seeking re-election, since she is expected to be appointed to a vacant seat on the Long Beach City Council on July 1. That leaves her longtime board colleague Norman Alpren as the lone incumbent on the ballot.
Former trustee Roy Lester, who lost a closely contested race a year ago, is back on the ballot, as is former candidate Jannine Laskas-Gillespie. Gillespie last ran in 2000, when she appeared to have victory in hand until absentee ballots swung the vote to Alpren. The newcomer in the field is Franklin Alvarado, a 1988 LBHS graduate who has traded in his soccer cleats for a successful career in real estate and architecture.
Facing a much easier battle is Library Board trustee Paula Freund, who is running unopposed to remain on the board. Freund and her colleagues are hoping for the passage of the $2.5 million proposed library budget, which is 8.6 percent greater than the current one and would require about the same percentage increase in taxes.
Finally, voters will have an opportunity to vote on a bond that, along with matching grant money, would allow the district to replace nearly half of its bus fleet with new "clean air" buses, which run on natural gas. Twenty new buses would be purchased within the year. If the $1.5 million bond is approved, $350,000 would be allocated into the budget each year to pay for the bond, an amount that officials say would have to be allocated anyway if they were to purchase diesel buses over the next several years. [BOLD] Complete election coverage, page 3.
