Support schools by voting for the budgets

The Herald urges residents to cast “yes” votes on the proposed Malverne and West Hempstead school districts’ budgets, as both manage to simultaneously limit spending and preserve instructional and co-curricular programs.

Malverne
    Malverne’s budget and tax levy increases are the smallest in 13 years. To keep the spending increase at 2.7 percent, school officials used a number of cost-saving measures, including cutbacks in administration and central office expenditures, and approved an economical school reorganization. Although some mandatory expenditures increased this year while revenue — particularly state aid — went down,  the board reduced the tax levy increase to about 3.7 percent by using about $1.7 million from funds set aside in recent years for the rainy day that is today’s economy.
    The board may have lucked out this year with its deep reserve fund, and chances are future boards and administration will not have such a benefit, but Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund and Business Administrator Raymond Neblett are confident that careful oversight and management of finances will serve Malverne’s taxpayers, educators and students well in years to come.

West Hempstead
    Things are a bit different in West Hempstead, where there is no large chest filled with rainy day funds to offset high taxes. While the budget is solid, the tax levy increase — 9.4 percent — is undeniably high. But after examining the reasons behind that increase and looking beyond the numbers to the district’s conservative budgeting history, it’s clear to the Herald that the board made the best of a difficult situation and acted in good faith.
     Superintendent John Hogan and his deputy, Richard Cunningham, worked hard to trim West Hempstead’s proposed spending plan, cutting about $1 million in less than a month. They managed to limit the increase to about 3.7 percent, which is relatively low considering that there was no increase last year.
    What they couldn’t control, however, was the revenue side of the budget and a hike in some mandatory expenditures, which account for a significant portion of the tax levy increase. The budget accounts for just 1.8 percent of that increase, while the remaining 7.6 percent is the result of state aid cuts and the lack of a fund balance.
    Taxpayers should keep in mind that unlike other districts that have raised taxes each year and banked leftover money, which they are now using to supplement taxes, West Hempstead always put money back into the revenue stream. So when other school districts had high tax levy increases, West Hempstead’s were low or even nonexistent. Now those school districts have artificially low increases, while West Hempstead’s reflect the state of the economy.
    Understandably, taxpayers will be wary about voting for a budget that includes such a high tax levy increase. But voting it down would do little to help the problem: If the district is forced to adopt a contingency budget, West Hempstead residents would save about 50 cents a day, or $15 a month in taxes, but district children would lose programming, educators would lose jobs and it could take years for the district to recover.
    We encourage voters to support the children and the communities of Malverne and West Hempstead by endorsing the schools’ spending plans on Tuesday.