001Do a quick check down there. Do you think I need this microphone? Or is it okay if I do not have Oh, my goodness. Okay. Thank you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, how are you all this evening? My crowd The crowd here of all of the seniors, this is their favorite every single year is the favorite meeting for the senior class because they get to be counted as two and they have to go to two meetings. So, this is a two-for-one. So, we almost always have students with us, which I appreciate. Um this evening, I'm going to do my presentation first and then we will move into meet the candidates uh this evening and and read some candidate statements, but I'm going to take you guys through uh the budget for the '26-'27 school year.
002So, I'm Patty Shnell, the superintendent here at schools for those of you that are visiting us this evening that might not know me. Uh and it is my privilege to share with you our plan for the '26-'27 budget. So, what you will see inside this budget that has been developed by the Board of Education is that the budget itself is mission-driven. Every single day that we show up here, we show up to make sure that every Raider has the experience that they need. This budget has been designed to make sure that it does just that. So, we talk about the school district and the budget as being sort of two sides of the house. One side of the house is the instructional side, everything that the children touch. The other side of the house is
003everything that we have to have in order to keep them safe. So, let's start there. Uh this budget does include all of your safety and security features. Each year, we do camera projects. For example, we spend about $35,000 a year making sure that all of our security cameras are updated, that we don't have blind spots in areas of the buildings both inside and outside the building to keep our facility monitored and safe and also to keep children safe uh while they're here during the day. Part of this project or this budget also takes care of this facility. So, the entire campus uh, and all of the folks that work here to do that. The budget also provides security upgrades. Uh, this year you're going to see us focusing up in a little bit on some
004technology security upgrades, in particular making sure that we get fob access on some of our server closets. Uh, we do get audited by the by the state of New York on different areas each year and in this year's technology audit that is one thing that they would like us to focus on in terms of their feedback to the district. So, you'll see us taking care uh, of our facility in that way as well. We are planning in this budget to purchase another bus. Our bus will still be a diesel bus. So, it is a question that I get asked everywhere I go, how do I feel about electric buses? I feel like until electric buses can get the job done, uh, we don't intend to buy any. Uh, that's the stance the district will take
005and of course superintendents across the state of New York and school board associations across the state of New York are taking that same stance. They encourage all of our taxpayers to do the same. Electric buses right now we would be unable to manage them in terms of we have three runs that we could not even put children on electric buses and get them to and from school on time. There would be no adequate safety plan for us should we get all of our children to school and then need to leave with electric buses. So, you need only get me to the safety component for our children and it moves to our back burner very quickly. Uh, we're also in this project planning for some upgrade controls. So, when you think about your home, uh, I
006guess how I would explain it. I don't have a Nest. Do you know what Do you know what a Nest is? Like it hooks to your thermostat and you can set the temperature controls and like use an app to do that. I don't have that. We're not that tech savvy. I walk over and turn the heat up and I walk over and turn the heat down. Here at the school though we're managing a very large facility, and so much like the nest, all of our stuff is digital. We have what is called EcoStructure. EcoStructure allows us to see this entire campus, all of its heating, cooling, and HVAC units. We do have a couple of control systems that allow that that real good bird's-eye view of our system that we're struggling to communicate with. So,
007in this project, you will also see upgrades to particular controls to get rid of the the technological glitches that we're experiencing between the controllers and the software. This is the side of the house I love the most. That this budget will continue to offer a high-quality academic and all-around student experience. Even though we are going to go out this year at a 0% increase on the tax levy, we are not cutting any of our programs, any of our courses, any of our teachers or supports, which puts us in a fantastic place in comparison to our neighbors. So, to all of them this evening that are having conversations with their communities around while we're having the conversation, we send our well wishes. May we not have to join you next year. You'll hear me talk a
008little bit this evening about foundation aid and how the state funds school districts and how important it is for us as a community to both think short-term and long-term so that this side of the house, providing full-day UPK, increasing dual enrollment opportunities for our kids across the high school, making sure that we're growing real true STEM experiences with the largest growing sector in the job market right now. We want to make sure all of our children have opportunities to take 4 years of math and science. We want every reader to find their voice. You just heard this evening from Maeve that she'd like to see us add another club and activity, right? We offer tons of clubs and activities, and our ones that are the most well-attended in terms of number of students participating are
009the ones the children have shown up here and spoken at this podium for us to put in place, or come into the office of the principal and beg for something different. So, your trap club, your archery club, yeah, to all the cheers in the back there. Thank you, Chadwick, for the for the gift, man, and increasing all of our programs along the way. It's that kind of passion that kids have where you teach them how to find their voice that I believe teaches them that lifelong skill. We talk about preparing them for college and career, and then really what that's about is that you're able to advocate for yourself, focus in on what your needs are, and and meet those needs. And this budget provides all kinds of opportunities like that for students. Here's our
010bottom line, ladies and gentlemen. This budget will come in at $23,560,437. You will see that our budget and our appropriation side, which is where we're talking about our expenses, what it is we're going to spend, compared to our revenue on the other side, are equal, meaning that we do not have a gap. Our budget is balanced as we're moving across what we intend to spend and the revenue that comes in. Our tax levy is again, and I would say now for the third year, right? So, it's the second year that we're going to go out at a 0% increase on that levy, which means it's the third year that the levy, or the amount that we've collected from our taxpayers, has remained exactly the same at $7,923,478. So, we are moving into year three of
011not increasing that levy. >> [snorts] >> Our revenue sources, just to give you a break from my voice for a second, I'm going to introduce you to Mr. Colwell. Mr. Colwell, do you want to talk about our revenue sources? Is this your favorite part? Yeah. Um, so, this year don't know if I need this, but I'll use it anyway. Um All right. So, we have a mixture of different revenue sources we use to close the budget gap and just to generate our revenue side of the house in general. Uh if you take a look up here, other revenue you'll see increase this year, um which is the different ways we generate revenues, um things like interest on investments, um things that can come in through strategic use of BOCES, sales tax from from Monroe County
012municipalities and things like that. You see we use the same amount of appropriated fund balance, but if we look below that, we have an appropriated unemployment reserve. Remember back to last year, which I'm sure a lot of people do, we had a couple of recommendations come from the comptroller on our unemployment reserve specifically, so this year to help fund our budget, we're taking $200,000 out of that reserve and appropriating it as revenue to be used to close the budget, not just on unemployment-related um expenditures. You'll notice restricted reserve use went down this year, and that's because the unemployment reserve is actually a restricted reserve, but the way we're using it, we're appropriating it for reserves for this year, so we're able to use a little bit more revenue there. Um and at the end of
013that, interfund transfer is not something we're doing this year, but the other important thing I just want to mention, I'll go back to other revenue and state aid, you'll see that our state aid went up this year. Uh Dr. Shonola already mentioned that, that's something that we're very lucky to have this year that a lot of districts in our region didn't have, our state aid increasing, and then I'll just touch on revenue one more time, we just strategically used those um those reserve accounts and our fund balance to generate things like um um interest and take advantage of of our taxes so we can generate more revenue for our budget. And I'll let you keep that. Oh, good. >> let's go right to debt service for me for a second cuz I want to go
014back and forth between these two slides a little bit. Let's just draw the connection to the capital project and how it increases both our revenue and our expense. So, if you take a look down at that service and transfers, you notice that last year's budget was $1.4 million and this year's budget for debt service is $2.4 million. That is a 74% increase year-over-year in just that line. Now, the what we'll notice there is that's about a million dollars. So, a million of that increase budget to budget, so 21 6 to 23 5, is just that service for our capital project. And that also covers capital projects back to 2015 that are still, um, we'll say we're we're still making payments on. The caveat here is while that is a budget increase to debt service to
015pay for the capital project, to pay for all the things you're looking at in this room, um, that comes back at an average of 84% on aid. So, if you take a look back here, thank you, Dr. Chanel. >> If you look at the state aid number increasing, you'll see that huge increase there 15.94 year-over-year. 2.005 million, I got to work for that one, of that 5, um, sorry, $13.4 million, 2 million of that is just generated on building aid. So, if we flip back here again, we see that that's increasing $1 million and it's $2.4 million. $2.005 of that is actually coming from the state to fund that specific line. So, that's not coming from things like tax levy, it's not coming from categorical aid that are outside of building aid, it's not coming
016from our interest or anything else we generate revenue with, that's just coming back because we invest in the capital project and then we get a building aid back from New York State at 84% that helps us pay that off. So, that is almost it's close to a net zero expenditure this year. So, we see the increase, but the increase is actually funded by New York State on the other end of the revenue. Fantastic. You want to talk a little bit about employee benefits? Yeah. Yeah, I love employee benefits. >> that. That's another big driver for our budget. I'm going to let him give you all the good news, so then I'll take it right back. Uh employee benefits did increase this year. We have We have a few different employee benefits packages here, uh depending
017on the unit and depending on the uh term that the employee group has been with Cal Lutheran. So, the reason I say to that or start there is to say that there's been different increases across the bargaining units and across the different health insurance offerings that we have. So, the average is around 18 to 19% on increase. Some of those units went up 30% this year. Some of them went up 12.5. Some of them went up 15. So, it's all over the board. So, we do see some increase in employee benefit Well, not some increase. There's an 8.95% budget to budget. Now, in employee benefits, there's also your teacher retirement system, your employer retirement system, um uh there's a couple insurances that run into there that are not health insurance related. So, that's what's keeping
018that number down a little bit because the rest of those things didn't increase as much. We saw a slight decrease in teacher retirement system and only a small increase in employee in the ERS system, but overall, we did see a I'll say a pretty sizable increase in just health insurance, and they do expect that to continue year over year on the fiscal year for next year, but um yeah, that's that's employee benefit I mean, employee benefits is going to continue to climb, and we're able to kind of mitigate that this year with our increase in state aid. Thank you. I'll let him do all the fun things. So, uh really the only final thing I want to say about this slide is that we look at that budget to budget increase and so I just
019want to draw our attention to the bottom number there. That budget to budget increase is at 8.77% but that is because our capital project has come on. So you're seeing that increase in what we're paying out but we showed you that we generated in aid on the other side. I think unlike any other business that you've ever considered in the way that it runs because schools generate state aid, capital projects are actually not just investments in our facility but they also generate revenue for us and allow us to actually take care of this facility in a way that we just could not do if we were doing that on on tax collection alone. So with debt service and building aid just to kind of nail this one home, you'll see this in our newsletter as
020well because when when you see such a large increase in the budget from year to year, we just want to make sure that our community understands that that is your capital project coming on and off. A couple of folks have asked me about our capital project cycle. We are currently running a five-year capital project cycle. So the same way that we're generating aid right now on our expenditure, eventually our expenditures go down, our aid stays up and then our aid starts to drop. When the aid starts to drop, we actually want to bring on our next project. So when you hear us talking in just a couple of years about our next capital improvement project and what we could do to upgrade our facilities, I just want to remind you all in this moment that
021we generate enough aid to really offset those costs for us. It It gives us a big bang for our buck every time we invest that way. The way I like to describe it, the state of New York, if you guys get your paycheck this next week and you look at how much money came out of your paycheck in taxes, the state is going to say taxes, the federal government is going to say taxes. The way the state works in terms of funding education is that they take the money from you, they take it up to the state of New York and then decide how they're going to spend it. I like to think about the capital project aid that we receive as a big pot of money that sits at the end of a rainbow.
022They already took it from us. And as a school community, if we don't create capital improvement projects so that we can go up to the state and get the money back out of that pot, someone else is going to. Right? So, these capital projects are our way of saying, let's control what we can and let's make sure that we're investing in capital improvement and and chasing after the money that we already sent to the state that they allocated in this way. So, capital projects for us is a way to bring that revenue back into our local community. So, our three-part budget, I think that this is something that we are always super proud of. It is definitely, when you talk about a budget and its design and we say that we're mission-driven, this is the
023only pie chart that you're going to see. Mission-driven for us really means that everything that matters for program, everything that matters for the children, is what we spend our money on. So, of course, as a school district, there are other expenses that we incur in order to support programming, but 70.5% of this budget will go directly to things that the children will engage with, whether it is the teacher standing in front of them, the Chromebook in their hand, the chair that they're sitting on, the heat in the room, everything to support the children is how this budget is built. Capital is sitting there at 17.6% and then your administrative budget, which does kind of cover everything in terms of your administration, it covers all of your facilities generation, legal fees, all kinds of things are
024built into that administrative line. That is the lowest portion of our budget. >> [snorts] >> Property tax report card. You want it? You want it or no? There's not >> [laughter] >> This is more of a reserve slide than the >> This is an easy slide. The reserve slide. You want to Well, easy slide, there's not much to say here. This just shows a flat levy. We are responsible by law to give this to or provide this to New York State. It's just our property tax report card. All this shows, the top here, the bottom will show later. It shows some reserve health. We're reporting out. It just shows our budget from last year, 2166678, the increase to the 235, and then the biggest highlight on this one is just the tax levy staying flat
025at 7.923. You want this one? You want me to You love capital outlay. >> love capital outlay. >> [laughter] >> Uh this year, so again, back to the building aid we talked about earlier with the capital project we still get building aid on capital outlay project, which is just a fancy term for annual smaller capital project that is aided up to $100,000 at around 84 to 86%. That's where you get the 86% number. Um next year we're planning to upgrade controllers for our digital HVAC monitoring system, which is a really fancy way of saying what Dr. Schnell said, which is just a fancy Nest system for our school district so we can have a bird's eye view and Dr. Schnell and I and Mr. Walter can check these things and Ms. Pete from our homes
026and make sure that the schools are operating healthy and safe and we know what's going on at all times and we can also have efficiency within the buildings. You want this one? >> I'll do it. I don't >> All right. >> [laughter] >> All right, ladies and gentlemen, what happens if the school district budget does not pass? Uh so, we will be voting on the 19th, next Tuesday, and I encourage all of you to get out and vote and let your voice be heard. Uh if by chance the school budget does does not pass the first time, the Board of Education has a couple of decisions to make. They can actually put the exact same budget up to vote. They can adjust the budget and put out a different vote. Um if by chance that
027second vote does not pass, the district will move into what is called a contingent budget. In a contingent budget, really a couple of key things have to happen. Uh, we have strategically, you know, as you as you see that we we have increased expenses just like all of you do. They at the gas pump, everything is more expensive than it has been. We We are experiencing all of those same increases. So, for us to go out to the community with a 0% levy, we had to be very thoughtful about the budget lines as we're loading them and how we are going to maintain what the community expects and also like pull the line. So, you'll see that if we move into a contingent budget we will be removing from our budget exactly what the law
028requires. The law requires requires in a contingent budget and we remove all equipment. You'll see that we're budgeted there for $61,294. We would have to remove that capital outlay project that that blind spot that we currently have in the server closet right here in this room that causes coils to burst on a very cold day. I would like that. Uh, we would have to remove that right out of the gate and that would turn take our contingent budget down to the number that you see there, the 23,399,143. >> [snorts] >> Really, what the contingent budget is is we can't collect any more levy than we did the year before, which is exactly what we're proposing to do in the first round of budget design here. So, your projected school tax rates, this is really important
029for all of the adults in the room. So, when we're talking about uh, the budget, we're talking about what that's going to cost each homeowner. Uh, we did do a survey out to our community. We've also invited community members in. We had three sessions. We've also the Board of Education and myself have gone out into the community and met with members of the community. And I think resoundingly what we heard, no matter if we were reading survey results or we were sitting right in front of people, it was, we love our school, we're proud of the Raiders. The economy. Just please try to take care of the tax burden. So, you see a budget that has been developed in that way. Uh we're also understanding that for the town of Caledonia, you've been re-assessed. And
030the town of Caledonia re-assessment uh has really I I caused a stir in the community around being able to afford the home that you live in. Uh so, we want to talk just for a second about the the connection between what happens when you are re-evaluated, what happens to your school tax bill. So, what you're going to look at here are all estimates. There are far too many things that go into developing your tax bill that I So, we can't say that this is exactly what your tax bill will look like. But, what we want to draw your attention to this evening on this slide is that this is an example from Caledonia. So, this is actually somebody's last year's tax bill. Uh what we're projecting the tax rate to be, again, it's an estimate.
031So, you can see that last year you the tax rate in Caledonia was $15.15 per thousand. And so, someone whose home was valued at 209,005 had a school tax bill right there of $3,173.32. If that same person this year with their re-evaluation, if their home went up in value by just about 40% to 294,348, you'll see that our estimated tax rate right now for Caledonia is dropping to $10.74. That's what happens during re-evaluation. The community becomes worth a little bit more money and it adjusts a little bit how that tax rate is then applied because as a school, as we told you, we are only going to collect the $7,923 that we collected for the last couple of years. So, your tax bill is only going to be calculated to make sure that you pay
032your portion of that. No matter what, when you open up your tax bill, and I think last year I wish I had really understood what the tax bill meant. In In the end, the tax bill, what the district is going to do is not increase our levy. So, you might see an increase in your evaluation. You could go up 40%, which is right about on average what is happening across the the town of Carolina, about 40% on average I'm told. If that is the case, this is an example of about 40%. So, since the tax rate is dropping, you can see that this tax bill actually went down by 17 cents. And that's like mind-blowing, so I just want to say it again. You can have an increase in your assessed value by up to
03340% and still see your tax bill stay exactly the same or a little bit less because the school district is not going to collect more money. So, that's just the way the tax bill functions. So, what I would encourage community members is if you've looked at the newsletter, we put some equations in there to try to help you. I'm going to say guesstimate because there are still some numbers that we don't know. Uh they're not firm enough yet. There's a lot of estimates in here, including equalization rates have been estimated. The The overall value of the multiple communities that our school district serves have been estimated. All of those things will become harder numbers, more secure numbers as we get into the end of June, beginning of July, and their certification in August before your
034tax bills are calculated. But, if the newsletter and the way those equations work is feeling frustrating to you, or you'd really like to have to sit down and have a conversation with someone about your school tax bill, I would just encourage any community member to make an appointment with Mr. Colwell and come in. He's got a nice little calculator that he's built. He can help you estimate, but it will be an estimate. He That makes us nervous, doesn't it, Brian? Makes me a little nervous. It makes us nervous. It would be a nice thing, but but I do think we can get you close. This year's school budget, as I said, I hope you come out and vote on Tuesday the 19th. Um the back of our newsletter actually shows you exactly what the propositions
035are going to look like. So So to all the seniors in the room, if this is going to be your first time voting ever, this is actually what it's going to look like when you get inside that that voting area. So proposition number one, we are asking the community to vote on this budget. It does have a 0% increase in the tax levy. Proposition number two, we're asking for your permission not only to buy a diesel bus, but to buy that diesel bus out of our capital and vehicle reserve. So you're granting us permission to go use the reserve and to purchase the bus. And finally, Board of Elections. So we have two Board of Education seats that are open this year, and we have two candidates running. Uh the next portion of our of
036our conversation here, we'll move into meeting the candidates, uh but not before we open it up to questions. Are there any questions in the room about the proposed budget? Yes, ma'am. How much is in the reserves? How much total is in the reserves? I don't know the number off the top of my head. I would say you're looking at about the overall about 30% of our operating budget is in the reserves. Um so he'll crunch numbers for me. So uh some of our reserves are restricted, meaning they can only be used for the purpose that they were created. Uh other reserves have a little bit of flexibility. We call those operational reserves. So overall, we have about 30%, but but I want to say 18% of that I think is in operational reserves. It's just
037under $7 million, about $6.9 million. And like Dr. Schnell said, a large portion of that are in restricted reserves. So those are exactly how they're described. They're restricted to the use of the type because So if we have an then unemployment reserve that has to be used against an unemployment invoice. We have a workers comp reserve, PERS reserve, ERS and the future equipment capital, those have to be used for those specific purposes. What does the state tell you what certain amount reserve that you can have or you guys can just You can have as many as much as you like. You can open whatever reserves the board will approve. Some reserves need to be authorized by a referendum by community vote. They want to see a minimum. Um the state wants to see 10 to
03815% and then borrowers want to see 30% or more. Uh so not that you asked this but like for example, the district has a very good credit rating um which has allowed us to save money on the capital project due to that credit rating. Um you I mean I'm sorry, due to that reserve balance being what it is. Okay. So just a follow-up question. If you guys do have reserves and you have stuff that you need to pay off, why don't you use the reserves to pay that off? It's a great question. Um So we have let's say let's just say we have the $8 million, right? That $8 million is just in one account and it's not legal in any circumstances to just use that money where where we'd like to put it, right?
039So right now we have about $2.4 million in the capital reserve. The debt we have is only in capital projects. We issued that debt through bands and ultimately bonds that would be 15 or 20-year financing. We can't go back and then use the capital reserve to pay those off. Also, we we don't have enough in that specific reserve to do that. We can't use the remaining reserves to transfer any of the capital reserve to pay off more. Now, a few things will happen. You can take I know you like you're trying to steal this from me. So, you can't use it at all if you pay it down. We You can use it in the beginning to increase the local share of a project so that there's less to pay off. And that's what we're
040doing right now. You're fine. You're fine. I don't know if you have any questions. Yeah. You want this, don't you? I do. I do. I do. I really do want this. I'm actually going to bring you back a copy of the newsletter because one of the things that we did differently this year is in the newsletter, we actually did a snapshot of what our reserves look like in terms of our use this year. So, you can see that as we budgeted our revenue, we actually allocated reserves, which we do every year to help us offset the budget. But, in here we did a snip of that and then underneath it there's a QR code that will actually take you out to our entire reserve plan. So, something that Brandon and I have been working on
041pretty diligently for the last year is making sure that our reserve plan gives the taxpayer a really good idea of how much money is in that reserve and why the reserves exist or what we could use the money for. So, I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that you can study that and then come and see me if you want to talk reserves anytime. Sure. The The other I I just want to comment you said I'm paying off debt, right? I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. Sure, yeah. The important thing to remember with with any debt we have is on the other side of the the appropriation. So, we're going to put aside money to pay that debt, right? But, what I was ex- what we were talking about earlier is
042that debt is actually generating aid for us every year. So, we're not paying we're not necessarily paying debt. We're receiving a payment from New York State to make those debt payments because our building aid ratio is so high. In some cases, we actually come out in the black on that. Um but so I I just see a point I just wanted to comment on that. Yeah. It's also aid. Yeah. it. I can see that. Yeah. But we're still being made whole by New York State. So I don't know if we're Peter or Paul in this case. But we are the the aid comes in every like this year. So the payment is going to total about 2.4 million. We're going to get about 2.1 million in aid aid for that. So we where we might
043have on paper 2.4 million dollars in debt payments, we're actually getting almost entirely that from New York State to make those payments. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions? Don't forget to vote. Make your voice be heard. Thank you, everyone. >> [applause]