By:Doug Miller
The spending plan, which totals $91,958,692 goes before the voters Tuesday, May 18, along with the proposed library budget of $2,591,725. School officials speculated that the meeting was so sparsely attended because the City Council was holding an informal listening session at the same time, and because this budget has been reviewed for the public repeatedly. Tuesday night's final budget review was required by state law.
School officials were careful to stress that the budget, which represents a 5.9 percent increase, is the sixth-smallest budget increase among the 56 school districts in Nassau County. Several fixed costs were increased by the state. The district's obligation to the teachers' retirement system increased by $1,220,000; the bill for the civil service retirement system increased $910,000 and health insurance premiums increased $1.2 million. Those numbers, officials said, represent more than half of the budget increase. Meanwhile, the number of estimated employees in the program budget, i.e. teachers and support staff, drops from 640 to 633.
Should the voters defeat the budget, the district will adopt a contingency spending plan that includes a 3.2 percent increase, but would eliminate staff, certain transportation expenditures and several sports programs while increasing class sizes.
"Our kids are doing well at all levels," said Steve Weitz, the president of the Board of Education, who is running unopposed for a third three-year term. "Although this was a difficult year budget-wise, we were able to come in with a low budget increase."
Several co-op and condo owners in the school district were hit with 300 percent school tax increases last year because of a glitch in the Nassau County reassessment. For years the district, for tax purposes, lumped co-op, condos and certain commercial properties in with the utilities, which pay a large portion of the school tax burden, as a way of keeping apartment dwellers' taxes down. The plan backfired after the reassessment greatly devalued the utilities.
Gov. George Pataki signed legislation last month that will give the affected Long Beach taxpayers retroactive relief in their next tax bills. But that will not come until long after those taxpayers go to the polls next Tuesday.
In 2003, the $86,810,811 budget passed. Of the 29,499 registered voters in the Long Beach City School District, 3,735 voted, or 12.6 percent. Last year, there was a competitive race for the school board.
