COLONIE – The South Colonie Central School District Board of Education will present a $99.5 million budget to voters on May 16 that increases spending by $797,500 and taxes by 1.5 percent.
The budget, if approved, will cost the owner of a home worth $200,000 about $4.58 more per month or $54.96 a year. For a home valued at $175,000, it will cost an additional $4.01 per month while a home at $225,000 would be an additional $5.15 per month.
The brunt of the additional spending, $888,000, is for staff throughout the district with an additional $720,550 for instruction. Of that, there is a proposed $444,000 increase for elementary school teachers and a proposed $103,000 decrease for teachers in grades seven through 12. Other areas of the budget were trimmed, such as $136,000 cut from miscellaneous contracts and $100,000 from the allocation for substitute teachers.
The proposal also includes funding, $124,000, for two additional social workers to the current staff of five.
The budget also includes funding for 20 additional security cameras, parking lot and road repairs, replacement of a roof and a backup generator at the district offices and a new scoreboard at Lisha Kill Middle School.
It cuts transportation spending by $97,000 and debt service will shrink to $2.5 million from $3.7 million, a reduction of 11.68 percent.
It calls for spending $540,000 from the fund balance, decreasing it to a little more than $2 million.
There will be a second proposition on the May 16 budget to purchase 10 news school buses at an annual cost of $121,000, with the first payment due in the 2018-19 school year. If approved, the buses will be financed over five years and 58 percent will be supplemented by state transportation aid. If approved, the bus purchase will add 4.4 cents to each $1,000 of a property’s assessed value per year.
Also, there will be two incumbents running for two open board seats, Leonard Motto and Rose Gigliello.
The Board of Education will hold a public hearing on the budget on May 2, at 7 p.m. in the Saddlewood Elementary School cafeteria.
