School admins optimistic with budget
By LILY MAGURNO
[email protected]
LATHAM—North Colonie Central School District is entering the final stages of approving a budget for the upcoming school year that will impose a 0.74% increase from the previous year, reflecting higher health and liability insurance, utility, and retirement costs.
“We are confident that the numbers that we are proposing put us in a good position to continue to move forward,” said Cybil Howard, Assistant Superintendent for Business, at a Board of Education meeting on April 1.
The proposed $155,230,502 budget includes the district’s plan for property taxes, which includes a tax levy of 3%. A tax levy is the amount of money a district needs to collect from property taxes. The maximum allowed tax levy is 4%, which decreased slightly from 4.06% because of savings in transportation costs. The normal tax levy limit imposed by the state is 2%, but district expenditures can allow districts to increase the limit, which North Colonie has done.
The current proposed revenue for the district’s property taxes ranks up 3% to $98,467,974, comprising 63% of the budget.
Enrollment from the district has also seen a steady increase the past few years and has been taken into account in the budget planning, according to Howard.
“As enrollment continues to increase, that has an impact on the budget,” Howard told Spotlight News after the meeting.
The Board of Education cannot vote on the proposal until the state budget is approved. Approval of the state budget, which proposes a 9.3% increase in Foundation Aid to North Colonie, has been delayed.
“There are still a lot of unknowns,” said Howard. “The New York State budget has not been approved yet, so we are still working with anticipated projected state numbers.”
“If that foundation aid number goes up or down, that would necessitate us needing to use more fund balance if state aid decreases or less if it increases,” Howard added in comments after the meeting.
The budget could also see the impact of the changing landscape of recent tariffs. They have not been accounted for in the proposed budget but have been brought up in budget discussions.
“The biggest impact it could have is on our instructional technology budget,” said Howard after the meeting. Instructional technology includes laptops, tablets and TV monitors provided to students and staff. “What we are hearing from vendors is that if the tariffs do take effect they would have to requote us.”
The district’s solution to tariffs impacting sales is to pre order devices from vendors to avoid quote changes. In the future the district would possibly look to decrease the amount of technologies they are buying to fit the tariff’s price increase, according to Howard.
One item that the district pre-ordered were new diesel school buses in order to prevent price increases from the school’s bus vendor. This commitment will be voted on by the community on Tuesday, May 20, according to Howard.
Along with the buses, the current budget will be up for vote on May 20, following a public hearing for the budget on Wednesday, May 7.
Lily Magurno is a UAlbany Journalism student participating in the SUNY Institute for Local News initiative to help community journalism.
