District Officials Begin to Draft Budget
It what promises to be a challenging exercise, Huntington School District administrators are developing a draft budget that holds down the potential tax increase to the low single digits. To do so will require millions of dollars in spending reductions.
School trustees asked district officials to present such a document in order to determine the exact extent of cuts to personnel and programs that would need to be made to hold down the tax rate. Huntington, like other districts across the state, is facing the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid and significantly higher contribution rates for the two employee pension systems.
The situation surrounding state aid is fluid since the state legislature has not taken up Governor David Paterson’s budget proposal in which he proposed sharp aid reductions. Another unknown factor is what the district’s total assessed property value will be. A decline in assessed value effectively shrinks the tax base, putting upward pressure on the tax rate.
Principals and department heads have begun meeting with Superintendent John J. Finello and Assistant Superintendent David H. Grackin to provide input into the draft budget, which will fund district operations from July 1 through June 30, 2011.
“This will be a very difficult budget cycle,” Mr. Finello said. “The economy is still struggling and so are taxpayers. We are taking a look at all areas of district operations. There is no doubt that some of the proposed cuts will be painful.”
School officials plan to release the draft budget to the public in early March. Trustees will then begin a series of public meetings where they will review each line of the spending plan before making final decisions and adopting a budget on Monday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the Jack Abrams Intermediate School auditorium. Residents will have the final say when they go to the polls on Tuesday, May 18.
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