001I call the special board meeting to a budget work session to order. All members of the board are present except ex officio student board members Kerkanis, Maurice, and Purba. Miss Mr. Mano, would you lead us in the pledge [clears throat] of allegiance to the flag. Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. everyone. It was supposed to be Ms. Blackenger and I apologize. [laughter] You take my my turn. Next time I would like to be. So, good evening and welcome to all in attendance. Please be advised that in the event of an emergency an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound. Please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away
002from the building. At this time we request that everyone turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silence. Thank you. We are now on item three. Are there any board acknowledgements? Mr. Bascalia. I was just at Maple West the other day for their yearly Star Wars week that Mr. Worthington puts on. I think he's been doing it for years. Um I just wanted to give him a shout out. The kids love it, and you know, they he dresses up as This year was C-3PO, and it was just a nice nice occasion to see the kids, you know, playing games and get involved with each other, and um you know, that's social emotional learning at its best. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Mr. Mana. Yes, I I attended the Williamsville North Career and Skilled Trades
003Fair that was held a few weeks ago, and that was a great turnout, a lot of different uh private and public sector employers. A lot of a lot of kids coming through, cycling through, picking up information. It's great that the district makes those other avenues uh of of careers either in place of college or while they're in college. A lot of these recruiters were saying, "We're we're more than willing to work with you around your college schedule." Uh it was well attended, and uh I look forward to seeing it again next year. Mr. Beilin. I attended the Williamsville North Unified Basketball Game against Maryvale, and always, as I said to Dr. Brown-Holland, he'll disagree with me, it's the best thing that we do as a district, by far. Um and fun was had by all.
004Thank you. Ms. Blackenger. Um just want to say happy Teacher Appreciation Week. I know a lot of the schools are honoring their wonderful teachers, so uh we honor our teachers here, too. So, thanks for all you do. Ms. Fletch. Yes. I just wanted to um let everybody know the art show that is going on right now at the Audubon Library. It was amazing, and just incredible talent in this district. All right. Thank you. Any other acknowledgements before we move on? Okay. Thank you so much. May I have a motion to approve agenda items four minutes, five personnel, six exceptional education, special needs, and student activities, as presented. Ms. Fletch second, Mr. Mana, is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. We are on item 7A. Um, our junior retreat is going to be
005date to be determined. Uh, but it should be this probably the second or third week of June. Item 7B and 7C, the board candidates and district annual vote information, including details on applications for absentee and early vote ballots, is available by contacting our district clerk. And other information is available in board docs. Is there any questions or comments on these items? Okay. I turn it over to Dr. Balin, uh, to introduce our budget presentation. Thank you, Board President. At this time, I would like to turn it over to Dr. Chris McGinley, acting Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Management Services, where he will review our proposed 2026-27 budget. Thank you, Chris. Great. Thank you, Dr. Balin, and thank you, Board. I'm uh pleased to present our 2026-27 proposed budget tonight. So, we'll begin with uh some
006familiar information here. Again, we uh begin each budget development process in January by identifying the areas we'll likely see the most significant cost increases to sustain our current programs. Uh, we've listed these on this slide and have categorized them into the mandated expenses, contractual expenses, inflation-driven, and the last is to support program. So, the left side with the yellow heading is the budget development for the 2026 school year, and the right with the blue heading are the projections for our long-range planning purposes. Looking at the left with the yellow heading, the first area is total employee salaries of almost $4 million followed by health insurance increases of around 2.1 million or an 8% increase and our BOCES increases of a little more than $2.2 million and as previously mentioned, we've experienced some significantly higher expenses
007in this area due to the rising cost of BOCES services to support students in special education programs and occupational education programs, as well as the portion of the rental fee that we pay. Uh it is increased by nearly a half million dollars for the next year and is projected increase another million dollars the following year due to the new special education building opening on Dick and Walden Avenue. So lastly, bus transportation is outsourced to Student Transportation of America and we have mandated an inflationary increases of about $1.1 million there. So given these figures, the total required expense increase to maintain our programs is $9,402,961, making our original working budget of $252,122, $828. So moving to the next slide is our program enhancements. To support the implementation of the special education strategic plan, we're adding two
008special education coaches to enhance student outcomes and we're also expanding our 15 to one program due to student needs. These enhancements total 300,000. Moving to the next slide, we have listed our program reductions necessary to balance the budget. The reductions listed remain unchanged since our last meeting and to review these again, they include the reduction of learning lab ptosis of 525,000, retirement savings of 588 585,000, equipment reductions of nearly 61,000, reductions in a previously budgeted APR code, reductions of 2,539,829 to our plan fund balance, which is essentially our ability to manage the short-term budget challenges such as unexpected costs, revenue fluctuations, or emergencies due emergencies during the year, and a reduction to the New York State Teacher Retirement System. Their published rates had forecasted for 2026-2027 payment year, they had a decrease in those rates.
009So, looking at all the reductions together, we've identified 4,253,984 in savings. So, this slide combines the totals from the last three slides, giving us a total our total expense budget right now of 248,168,844. So, again, you can see our total program continuation, our enhancements, and reductions here, giving us our adjusted increase to our budget of 5,448,977, and that results in a 2.24% increase from last year. So, I'd like to point out also on this slide that that 2.24% increase is still below the New York State CPI. That's the Consumer Price Index for school districts, which is 2.63%. So, this shows that the district is managing its growth responsibly and keeping spending increases below the inflation rate. In this table, we see the current budget year revenues in the yellow column, and the blue column in
010the middle is our projected revenues for next school year. And if you look at the white column to the right, we see the difference between the current year and the next year's revenues. So, the first major revenue source that we've explored before is state aid. You can see our total state aid figures in the top section, and our total state aid for 2020 6 27 is $70,071,418. This is only $404,888 $884 increase from this prior year. Um and our at our March meeting, though, we did unpack these figures in greater detail if you're interested to see those. The middle section outlines other incomes, where we see a few notable changes, which include a reduction in our pilots of $566,650, and an increase in our interest earnings of $750,000. The last major revenue source is the
011property tax levy, which is $153,072,576, which is up 3.14%, but is within the tax levy limit. So, when we bring all the revenue sources together, our total projected revenues of $248,168,844 match our total projected expenditures of $248,168,844, resulting in a balanced budget. This slide here, which we've reviewed in prior meetings, outlines our tax cap calculation. I won't go into great detail with it tonight, but as you can see the proposed tax levy in the blue box at the bottom of 158 I'm sorry 153 million 72,576 and that's the increase of the 3.14% and is within the tax cap. So each year we provide our community with an estimate of the impact on tax rates including what it would mean for a home with a fair market assessed value of $250,000. I do want to note
012that these calculations that you see here are based upon last year's tax assessments and equalization rates and that's because we don't receive the figures from the towns until mid to late July. So these are estimates and they might change slightly. But if we look across the top row for an Amherst resident with an equalization rate of 99%. We see that the estimated tax rate is $12.41 per thousand or 38 cent increase. After adjusting for the equalization rate we can see that that one's estimated tax bill would be about $3,072. Clarence is very similar to Amherst but has an equalization rate of 100%. However, if you look at Cheektowaga which has an equalization rate of 75% we see that the tax rate is adjusted to account for the lower assessed value. As a result while the
013estimated tax rate in Cheektowaga is $16.31 36 cents per thousand of assessed value the estimated tax bill remains comparable to those of Amherst and Clarence. So in summary we have a 2.24% budget to budget increase and a balanced balanced budget of $248,160,844. Our property tax levy is $153,072,576 or 3.14%. increase from the prior year and remains within the tax cap. So, ultimately at this point, our next step is the budget vote on May 19th and we look forward everybody showing up for that. And with that, I'll gladly answer any questions you may have. Mr. Bielan. I know that they just announced that they had agreed on a budget. Saw that today. Yeah. So, I'm assuming it's too early to tell if foundation aid has changed dramatically at all. It's too early to tell, but I
014did read through all of the the notes and I didn't see much or anything in there about education. Okay. I I assume that it was probably in the fine print somewhere. We don't have the fine print yet. That's right. Mr. Mana. Thank you and thank you again, Dr. McInerny. Um so, I'm always confused. I know you explained it last time, the PILOT. Okay. Payment in lieu of taxes, which is program that the Amherst IDA or maybe the county IDA gives businesses. They pay less than taxes for a certain amount of time. And then they eventually go back on to to the the full uh assessed value and pay the full tax amount. So, we're losing $566,000. I just don't I guess how are we losing money? Well, it seemed like it would be baked into
015or is it baked into then those properties going to full valuation on what they pay in taxes? And is that part of the additional $4.6 million that we're receiving in property tax? I guess I don't understand how we're losing money on PILOTs when they're really it's it's they're paying more taxes, non-PILOT taxes. Now, maybe I'm asking the question incorrectly, but I always when I see that saw that in March, it just jumped at me like that that that's a lot of money that we're losing, but I don't know if we're really losing it. Right. The the revenue, well, it's losing in that particular line, it is a revenue that's picked up elsewhere. Baked into the additional 4.6 that we're getting. Right. So, when you add down that column, it is still added in. Thank you.
016Any other board member questions regarding the budget? Okay. I don't see any, so we will now have our public hearing for the 2026-2027 budget only. Anyone wishing to address the board regarding the budget may go to the podium at this time. We did have one person, uh Athena Klaboe, sign up. Athena, you may step up to the podium. Good evening. This is a proposal regarding the budget as it pertains to the district's facilities. And speaking on behalf of myself and the other environmental club members present in this room, um we are concerned about the planet's future and we are hoping that in the district's budget there could be sustainable implementations, specifically a future goal of rooftop solar. Not only would this ensure energy independence, long-term savings, and significantly reduced greenhouse gas gas emissions, there are
017also many reasonable options to install solar panels. The district could get these through a variety of grants available, as well as power purchase agreements, which would involve zero upfront costs. Many schools in Buffalo have already taken this step, offsetting 1,700 metric tons of carbon dioxide. We hope that you can take the time out of your busy schedules to consider this proposal. Thank you, and have a good night. Thank you so much for your comments. Is there anyone else that would like to speak regarding the budget? You may step up to the podium. Okay, seeing no one else, we will move on. The PTSA Council School Board Candidates Night will be again tonight at about 7:00 p.m. We encourage all qualified voters to participate in our budget vote and school board member election, which is May
01819th, 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in North High School Gymnasium. And our next regular board meeting is May 26th. May I have a motion to adjourn the special board meeting. Mr. Buland, second, Mr. Mana. All in favor. Motion carried unanimously. Thank you and good night.