001And please everyone stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge 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. Okay, our district clerk is going to read the welcome and safety message. Good evening. In the unlikely event of an emergency, please use the exits located at the front and rear of the auditorium to exit the building. Do not attempt to drive away as you may impede the arrival of emergency services. Please be advised that smoking and the use of these products are strictly prohibited on school grounds. At the conclusion of the budget overview presented by Mr. Mazy, the public will have an opportunity to comment or ask questions. Comments will be limited to three minutes
002per person with no sharing. continue on. The annual budget vote and board of education trustee election is on Tuesday, May 20th, 2025. We will again have five polling locations which are Eagle Elementary School, Tmont Elementary School, Jackson Middle School, Medford Elementary School, and South Ocean Middle School. Put your mic on or pull it up maybe. Yeah, just go closer. The polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. All residents south of Main Street, vote at South Ocean Middle School. All residents between Main Street and Sunrise Highway Highway will vote at Medford Elementary. All residents between Sunrise Highway and Woodside Avenue vote at Saxon Middle School. Everyone between Woodside Avenue and Medford and the Medford train tracks will vote at Tmont Elementary School. and everyone north of Med of the Medford train tracks vote
003at Eagle Elementary School. In order to be eligible to vote in a school district election, a person must be 18 years of age, a resident of the school district for at least 30 days prior to May 20th, 2025, a citizen of the United States, and be registered to vote with the Board of Registry of the School District, or with the Suffach County Board of Elections. If you are registered with the Suffach County Board of Elections, you are automatically registered to vote in our election. The last day to register to vote is May 12th. You may register by visiting district office anytime before May 12th at 4:30 p.m. Although I do recommend you registering with the Suffach County Board of Elections so you are registered for all elections and not just the school budget vote election.
004This can be done by visiting vote.org. Absentee ballot applications are available on our website at pmschools.org under the board of education tab. The last day to apply for an absentee absentee or early mail val ballot is May 13th if you would like the mail the ballot mailed to you or by May 19th if you would like to pick up the ballot from my office. If you have any questions or need more information about any of these items, please call my office at 631-687-6370. We have two candidates running for two open seats. The seats are for a three-year term starting July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2028. The candidates are Miss Lauren Cuban and our current trustee, Mr. Francis Salazar. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to call for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion.
005Okay. Uh Francis and Kelly. All in favor? I all opposed. So five yay to motion carry. Okay, Mr. Maisy, we are ready. Thank you. Thank you and welcome to everyone here for an opportunity to review uh the culmination of our budget development process for the 2526 school year. This is our annual budget hearing. And what I'm going to do now is uh go over some of the uh the pertinent slides of where we land and the real things that uh you'll need to know before going out to the polls. So some quick state budget facts. And what I want to call your attention to is as I go through each one, the information that's shared uh initially here is not in boldprint. that is part of the governor's uh executive proposal that came out uh
006in January as it as it normally does and that's the first goround and then typically the governor and the legislative get together before they finalize the state budget and that's supposed to be done by April 1st each year and this year it has just been recently uh agreed upon and they have not shared the details yet but this is the latest we've ever seen this come about yet we uh cannot wait for that we had to prepare and adopt our budget prior to this to make sure the community had ample time to see this, read up on it, and then vote upon it in May. So, what I did include here is the bold information that's been just shared as of as of recently, so I can go over some some, you know, some of
007the most salient facts. So, the governor released it on January 21st, but as I mentioned uh just last week, that general agreement has been reached with the legislature for the budget. Uh the governor's executive proposal indicated 37.365 billion. That is an increase of almost 1.7 billion for education. That's a 4.7% increase which is significant and it's welcome news. But on the local level where it hits home for us, uh you're going to hear me talk about the impact we're feeling at Pat is not nearly 4.7%. It's much much less. But some good news. They did indicate uh some language that said the new agreement would include updates to the poverty measures within the foundation aid formula. So that could bode well for us. But once again, we don't have the state aid run yet because
008it had not been finalized. The governor's budget did though show an increase uh in state aid for us just over $221,000. That is a nominal amount and when preparing a budget that's not enough to grow uh your programs by. So, we had a very very uh lean approach to the way we prepared the budget this year. We saw the writing on the wall. We saw this coming down the pike and we prepared for this over the past three to four years. Um, so we're well positioned. What you won't hear me talk about tonight is you're not going to hear us talking about accessing staff. What you won't hear me say is we're not talking about closing buildings. And what you won't hear me say is we're not talking about changing things like, for instance, the
009mileage limitations for transporting students. Yet, that is what you will hear if you read News Day over the next few weeks, other districts are doing in drastic measures. I just heard about a recent smaller school district that's accessing upwards of 50 staff members. But it's all in the planning and we did some really strong planning over these past few years because we saw a district get upwards of $30 million through COVID grants and school improvement grants. And we planned first and foremost how to use those monies. But then what we were going to do when those monies were gone and through our planning over the course of several years we were able to absorb those changes and plan for this for this coming. Uh and you can't say the same for other districts unfortunately. But
010um under the new agreement, the quote, and this was a quote that uh was provided by one of the reporting agencies, was that the school district should receive more funding than they would have under the old foundation aid formula. So, we're hopeful that that will be the case, but like I said, until we have uh the firm numbers through the state aid run, we'll we have yet to know that. Um, one of the things I wanted to share was because I did talk about this during the first budget workshop, uh, because I think it's important to know like when we hear these big numbers about this increase in education aid is, $340 million was dedicated to the universal free school meals act. Uh, and that's a wonderful thing that allows all students to eat breakfast
011and lunch for free. Here's the thing. We already qualified for that. regardless of whether this budget went through or not, whether regardless of whether that was in there, we already qualified for that in December of 23. And every student in every uh school throughout our district eats breakfast and lunch for free. And we have that in place for the next four years, regardless of what happens. And that's important to know. That's the kind of plan, that's the kinds of things that we're out there doing and making sure we try to achieve for our students uh without needing from the state level. and we've recently put in for an extension for that for an additional five years. And last, uh, the executive budget provides 13.5 million for the implementation of distraction-free school policies. So, at the
012last, um, uh, board meeting, you heard Miss Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Tulin talk about this. Um, and just wanted to show that that this new agreement includes the bell-to-bell ban that she was speaking about on the student use of smart devices, and that is going to be effective this September. So the proposed budget information, the proposed budget is just over 245 million. The when we compare the proposed expenditures compared to the adopted budget for this year, that represents an increase of 1.63%. When we talk about being fiscally prudent, um that's that's the data showing you what we're talking about. That's a mo that's just that's not just saying the words, that's the actions. This budget does include an infund transfer of $2 million to our infund transfer to capital projects. I'll discuss that more on
013the next slide. Uh but this budget does not pierce the tax cap. The tax levy um that we'll get into more in subsequent slides is a tax levy increase of 2.49%. And I told Dr. Jones as of just last week when they did the Long Island comparison for all the districts, we were in the bottom five in both of those categories. It recently changed. I think we're still now in the bottom 10. Uh but unfortunately my mom was in the hospital this morning. I didn't get a chance to see where we fell, but we are toward the bottom of all the districts across Long Island. So, it's something to be very proud of. Uh as a reminder, this tax cap formula caps the levy and not the rate. I'll explain that more in a subsequent
014slide. And that um tax levy will differ from one district to the next. So even though we all utilize the same formula, it doesn't spit out the same result for everyone. That's why you see the different percentages. So here's the infront transfer to capital that I did speak about and this is just a quick recap. I did explain this in more detail uh during budget workshop number three but this was something that is embedded in our uh budget and it's designed for the purpose of us being able to do district uh upgrades to our capital infrastructure on a much smaller scale without going out to borrow. So no bonding necessary. But when you think about it, we've got 11 school buildings and we have district office. And these buildings are breaking down and needing a
015repair or things coming to the end of use for life all at the same time. And we've got to see what we can do within our operating budget each year. Uh what we can do within available capital funds uh I'm sorry, capital reserve funds that are available. And then also you remember last year was the big bond issue that was very specially designed for specific projects as will be a capital reserve when voted upon by the community. This is a means for the community to vote on it but once again on a much smaller scale. Things that we see that we are trying to do on a preventative basis where we can be strategic. So as I mentioned in the top line the asbesus floor tile removal is not something out of necessity. It's something
016that was identified in our building condition survey. That's the five-year report that our architects put together. It was something that Mr. Nunan and Miss Seanelloo and I went through. This report, um, it's extensive. It's like $13 million for a five-year plan. We're looking to see how we can utilize these funds to strategically go after doing these kinds of improvements to our district. instead of on an asneed basis, on a preventative basis. So that when we have to do any kind of retrofitting or construction, we're ahead of the curve because we'll pay less if we do multiple spaces or an entire wing or an entire building at one time as opposed to bringing in a contractor to do this on a one by one basis, a room by room basis or spacebyspace basis. So that's just
017the kind of thinking that we need to employ in order to do more with less funding. It also includes the um the safety locks. So for doors such as the room that we're sitting in, doors that have don't ar don't have a single million like you do in a classroom, we're looking to safeguard those spaces as well. So auditoriums, uh gymnasiums, uh main offices, any type of situation uh that we've that we've identified that didn't lend itself to the single uh door lock that is on all of our classrooms. Now, now we're looking to safeguard those other spaces because we think about it. We have our students in there. We have visitors in there. We have guests in there. We hold assemblies, awards events, all kinds of things. That's not lost on us. That's the
018big project that we're going to embark upon should the budget be passed for the summer. Uh we're also looking to replace the clock transmitters. We know that that's a need in the buildings listed there on the left. The old wrestling room at Saxton Middle School, that was part of a plan we shared two years ago. So, when we upgraded the unused space in Saxton's basement, we retrofitted that space, okay, we did that by using our in-house staff and then contracted to have the padding done on the floors and the walls, but now we've got this state-of-the-art wrestling room that all three middle schools utilize. So, we bolstered that program and now we're looking to utilize the unused space uh by the old wrestling room to use that for a dedicated uh physical education space for
019our Radar Academy which is also Harrison Saxon. We're also going to use it for the dance team and we're also going to utilize it for adult education. So, once again, you hear that theme doing more with less all the time, being smart and efficient with how we go about embarking upon these projects. And then finally, the L library rug replacement. That was something that you heard the civics class talk about. And this is something this is like phase one. This is trying to help them achieve their goals over the course of multiple years. The rug being the most prominent in terms of its appearance um and in terms of the significance to change the look. Right. Right. Right. First and foremost, but I will share something with uh with the board that that you didn't
020know last time I spoke. Um, I don't think I told you, but through savings, we realized in our operational budget, Mr. Richth was able to purchase the charging towers for uh the library and not only here at the high school, but also we're going to put two each at the three middle schools, recognizing that need. And that's once again just through savings that we achieved. And then our maintenance staff had done some electrical work and plan to do some more electrical upgrades. So, we've actually ticked off more in the list than I even promised the students when they presented to me. So, some notable staffing changes. So when I talked to you about having a fiscally prudent budget, um we shared over the past few years, how we were experiencing significant growth by bringing in
021the staff members, excuse me, that we needed for the academic support services that were required uh that we saw to uh get our students to where they need to be, but also on the social and emotional side as well. Very important that we address the whole needs of our students. We we also said at the time that when we experienced this growth, we were looking with an eye to the future and knowing that that was not going to be sustainable in the long term. Um, Miss Kennedy, Dr. Lucas, Dr. Cohen, Dr. Jones have been uh going through this um very uh diligently to make sure that we're addressing the needs of the students still, but addressing looking at the numbers also that are tied into enrollment because we're seeing the our enrollments going down. We
022need to be reflective of that not only for ourselves but for our community. So the net is a negative nine in terms of our FTEES but we still are experiencing growth in there for the areas that do need it. So we're not ignoring those areas but the overall change and this savings is through the retirements that we've experienced. So that's through the attrition that I mentioned earlier. So some some highlights of the proposed budget. Uh again we prepared a fiscally responsible budget. all the instructional services are being met and addressed. We did not adversely impact short change cut any program in any way, shape or form. Uh we're continuing to offer Radar Academy. We're seeing some early returns on that program. Bringing our students back into the public education setting and we're hopeful now next
023year that can we can we can strengthen that. That does help us on the financial side enables us to avoid out of district placements. We are uh bringing more staff and our CTE program, our career and technical education program is continuing to thrive and grow. That's wonderful for our students uh that are embarking upon vocational careers. But also from the financial side, that's a savings. The more we can bring back and I know I saw the the cosmetologist teacher the other day and I think is the waiting list upwards of 50 already for that. It's amazing how how the program is so successful that people are waiting on this waiting list to get into it. So, it's it's wonderful to hear. And then, um we're looking to expand our emotional and academic supportive environment program
024known as ease. This is for students with significant behavioral issues. Um we've been watching the trends of this as well for the past few years and knowing that we need to address these needs, meet students where they're at and address this. And that's uh something that we've got planned for next year. So never remaining stagnant, always moving forward. So this is just a quick summary of the revenues. Um and I'll do the same on the next slide for the expenditures, but this is just broken out to show you the breakdown that how your revenues are primarily your your property taxes, which equate almost 55% of our revenues, our state aid, which is roughly 40%, and then we've got the other sources, which are roughly 5% in totality. Uh there is um great detail in the
025popular budget uh information. The popular budget information goes through line by line. All the information here that's not captured. It's it's it's far too much. This information is available on our website is available each uh building in the main office and is certainly available upon request at any time. If you just contact my office, we'll make sure to send that out to you. This next slide is the summary of the expenditures. So you see that 245 million it was on the last slide as well for the revenues. Uh but this is the what they call the tri component breakdown of a budget. We are required by law to report that to the state to show uh the breakdown of the instructional program which is roughly 75%. The capital piece which is almost 15% and the
026administrative component which is about 10%. And when I talk about contingent budget later at the end of the presentation, any changes we would have to make to a contingent budget must retain that same ratio of instructional to capital to administrative. Meaning any changes for reductions cannot be made where you can't adversely just pull from one area, not another. It needs to maintain that same ratio. So that's why I share this information. So we talked earlier about that property tax levy and this is how we determine the tax levy. This is the formula that every district uses. Um, and I always like to share this because this this is used to calculate that maximal tax levy limit. And what was always shared by the state was this 2% tax cap. You say, Frank, you just said
027it was a 2.49%. Where is 2% coming from? 2.49 coming from if you're telling me 2%. The 2% is one component. It's one factor in here. I don't know if this is the pointer. I'll see if I can play. It's not. But the allowable levy growth factor that's what can be the maximum of I'm sorry the lesser of 2% or CPI. It's whichever is lower. CPI is inflation. And when inflation is greater than 2% we're forced to use 2% as our number. Even though we're forced to pay market price for our contractual services and our goods. Even if we're on state contracts, county contracts, we're still paying market price because it's going to be reflected in those contracts, yet a levy can only grow by that maximum number of 2%. But if the inflation is
028lower than 2%, that's the number that we have to use. So it's you can see, like I said, how the formula works. It's like I mentioned earlier, it differs from one district to the next depending upon their pilots and depending on other exclusions that they may have. But that's why you'll see the differ day when they put that information out. But I'm happy to say that ours is not does not exceed this maximum allowable levy. Therefore, our budget when it goes out to vote needs only a simple majority which is 50% plus one. So the proposed tax rate um you heard me talk about the 2.49% that number in terms of dollars is just over 3.2 million. And I'm going to talk about why. When we talk about proposed tax rate, you take it's a
029very simple formula. You take your levy and you're going to divide it by what's called the assessed valuation. That is determined by the town of Brook Haven. That's how you get your proposed tax rate. But the important thing to know when going out to the polls is this. We have that information now for our tax levy. What we don't have is that assessed valuation number. We don't get that from the town until usually August, but the community has asked to vote upon it in May. So, what we've done in our district over the last as long as I've been here is give the community a reasonable expectation of what this budget represents. Meaning, how can this impact me as a homeowner if I want to support this budget? And what we do is we assume
030a worst case scenario because if assessed valuation is the denominator in that formula and assessed valuation goes down, my property tax rate is going to go up. So what we do is we assume no declination and that would be the 2.68% number you see in that second bullet. And if assessed valuation goes down as much as 1%. Then that tax rate increase would be 3.71. But I just want to share with the community this couple things. Number one we changed it. It used to be 0 to 2% and we were painting far too negative a picture in our opinion because we looked at the last 12 years of data and we've only exceeded 1% one time. So we want to give a very realistic picture of what this is. But during the course of that
031time, we've seen assessed valuation rise on multiple occasions, which means the rate is lower than the numbers that I'm sharing. And the numbers I'm sharing, like I said, are are out there. They're in the in the budget brochure because we want people to understand what a worst case scenario can be. If there's no change in assessed valuation, that zero declination that I mentioned to support this budget, the tax rate would be uh I'm sorry, the tax uh dollar value would be $2269 annually. For the average home, which is assessed at $2,800. So, the town of Brook Haven assesses homes in the district. Apologize at um it's not the value of your home, that's the assessed valuation that the town provides. And the average home they tell us in our district is 2,800 for both the
032communities of Patchog and Medford. So this is what you would be if you're at the average home. But what we've done is prepared this property tax uh tutorial presentation. I'm going to come back to this if I can show you how to get to that link later. I've prepared a tax tutorial um for you the way we've done the last three or four years. And it walks you through a more in-depth conversation of everything I'm sharing with you, all this terminology, how the formula is derived, what it means, and where you can find this information on the town website because they changed the link. They changed the link on me. But we went, we found it, and we put it in here, and we show you exactly where you can find the information. And then
033we prepared a chart. If you had nothing more than five seconds, you say, "Hey, I know my assess valuation. What is the impact?" You go down, you go across, and you'll know your number. and we ran the values from 1500 assess valuation all the way up to 11,000. So at the top of the property tax rate you see there's that formula that I mentioned on the right hand side is the change in the assessed valuation that I was mentioning and if you see at the very top that 201718 year that's that one time that it went over that 1%. But if you notice of the last six years we've had it go down uh just one time. So if assessed valuation if it does go up like I mentioned we'll be lower than that 2.68
034number but we've always been within this range and that one year that we were at the 1.18 where it dropped by 1.8% we were still within the range because at the time we used to use a 0 to 2% uh range. So here's that contingent budget that I mentioned earlier. What happens if the budget fails? So if the budget does fail, the board has several options. We can put the same budget budget out for a vote a revote on the same exact budget. They can make changes to the budget either up or down or the board can decide to go to what's called a contingent budget. But the contingent budget has with it certain caveats that you need to know. First of all, the revote would take place on June 17th. Uh it would require
035cuts of to the budget of 3.2 million. That number may seem very familiar to you. That was the levy increase. That's because a contingent budget by its definition is a zero levy increase. So that's the change that we'd have to make. So that 3.2 million in terms of reduction, okay, would have to constitute several things. First of all, it would result in a budget of 241,997,000 and change. It eliminates automatically all equipment purchases. That's the first thing that has to come out. It also removes the interfund transfer to capital that I mentioned. That was the $2 million. It would require the elimination of two administrators. uh clerical staff to the tune of two full-time members, three part-time members, and their associated benefits. And lastly, it would require the reduction of certain supplies for travel and
036conference. Those are the changes that I mentioned earlier that we need to make sure that we maintain that same ratio of instruction to capital to administrative. And that's how those decisions were made for that. So, just a quick reminder, uh as you heard Mr. believe it explained before, the budget vote is set to take place on May 20th. It's from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the five locations. Uh there is a link, this brochure, I'm sorry, this presentation will be on the website. So I show you the link to the tutorial. There's also a link to the budget brochure. The budget brochure was mailed out um on Friday. Uh I understand we we check with everyone in Patrick and Medford households in our district and I can say that uh everyone's told me that
037they've received it. You should have all received it. I have copies here for you if you'd like to take one home with you. They're welcome everyone. And as I mentioned that that is already on the website. And finally, um well, before I end with questions, can can we go back text and just go to that tutorial really quick? The one on I think it's slide eight, please. I just want to thank you again for this because this has been your fourth year explaining this to me personally and it goes right over my head, but I can go on there and type in my numbers and it pops it out. Yeah. A couple more slides. I'll tell you when I think it's one more. Yes. The link at the bottom, please. Just so you could see
038Just so you can see what the property tax tutorial presentation looks like. Like I said, it's really just a more in-depth version of what I've shared because I always recognize there's a lot of data. there's a lot of terminology and understanding it and u is really critical I think when going out to vote because um mastery of knowledge is is your best friend when it comes to something like this. Um you want to vote on budget, you want to vote any kind of election, be well informed on what you're voting on and I and we designed this for that [Music] purpose. So we might not be getting it but like I said it really just walks you through what Oh, there it is. Okay. If I could use a clicker, you'll see. Let's see if
039this works. Okay, so there's the definitions about tax cap, tax levy, assessed valuation, and tax rate. I'm going through a little fast because I recognize everyone's time is important. I just wanted to quickly there's that same slide. I included there again just so you can see the formula and the explanations of how the tax levy correlates to a vote. Uh this is important information about the tax levy that caps um uh talks about the tax uh t it caps the levy not the rate. Okay, why it differs from one district to the next. It talks specifically about the numbers for this year's budget. This is adapted. I adapt this every year for this budget so you can see the actual numbers. Okay. Uh again I put down that formula for you at the bottom. But
040then on slides seven to 10, this is where you get into how we can determine the assessed valuation specifically uh how to go about doing that with with regard to where the information is that's provided by the town. So I go through a formula for you first. I give you three easy steps on how to go about doing that if you're so inclined where you can find the assess valuation on their website. two different ways to look it up. And then this is that estimator chart that I mentioned earlier that uh Trusty Creger just mentioned. This is just a snip snippet of it because I can't show the whole thing here, but there's where I said we ran the numbers from 1500 to 11,000. So you can go down and across and see what your
041estimated annual increase is and your estimated uh monthly increase. Just so you know. And once again, we say estimated simply because we don't know what the assessed valuation is going to come in at. So we have to like I said work with a worst case scenario. Okay. So now as I mentioned uh I'd be happy to entertain any questions. Yes sir. You're welcome. Oh they can't hear you. Would you like to step to the microphone? For the public, so you have to speak at the microphone. So, it's the same as we do. Yes. All of our meetings are recorded online. Okay. They may not see you on the camera, but they need to hear your voice. Let me just So, we're at the comments and question section. I just want to read. The public will
042be given an opportunity to comment and ask questions about the proposed budget. Time will be limited to three minutes per speaker with the duration of a full hour for this section and there will be no sharing of time or minutes. All right. Thank you for that presentation by the way. Um those those slides on the assessed valuation all of that is that available anywhere but I could see that. Yes. Okay. As I mentioned everything's on our website. Um okay. Um this may sound trivial but this this pamphlet why is it written in Spanish and English? I'm sorry. Why is it written in Spanish and English? So we so our community is very diverse. Uh we have a large number of English and Spanish speaking families. We've been doing this for for Okay. So this should
043be one page not four pages. You should be I'm sorry. Should be two pages not four pages. This is United States of America. We speak English. Okay. Now, how many students, how many people here in the classes are there Spanish speaking teachers as well? Sure. Of course. Why? Why are there Spanish speaking teachers? Why? Can anybody answer that question? Yes. Sir, can you just state your name for the record? You didn't say. No, I don't want to state my name because there might be recommendations. Why are there Spanish speaking teachers in these schools? Okay, this this this I'm sorry. This is this is for the budget. Yeah, this doesn't pertain to this should be totally strictly for the budget. So, you don't want to answer that question? No. How much money do you make? I'm
044not inclined to answer that question. Why not? It's a public forum. Why not? Why can't you How much money do you make? Sir, this is directly to the budget. These questions, the problem is I just paid my halfyear taxes. There were $8,000. Okay. This school district is ranked 32,000th. 32,000. And I'm paying $8,000 every six months. I get a pamphlet that's in English and Spanish. That's an absurdity. This is the USA. Okay. It's got to stop. Now, I'm moving out of this place because the taxes are ridiculous. I'm moving to Florida. But you're losing a tax base. You're losing people that want to get out of here. It's out of control. Do this. Let have people learn English. The kids going to school should be learning English. They shouldn't have Spanish teachers. I speak fluent
045Spanish. My mother is from South America. She came here legally and I didn't have all these benefits. I didn't have Spanish speaking teachers. Does anybody here speak Spanish? Yes. Fluently Italian and German. Okay. Spanish. Spanish. I'm talking Spanish. Yeah. All So we should be speaking English, only English. And I speak fluent Spanish with no accent. I would like to know how you would like them to learn to speak English if we do not have people teaching them. They shouldn't be here. Okay, sir. That's legally. They shouldn't be here legally. Okay, sir. The New York like my parents came here legally. Sir, you have 30 seconds remaining. I know you people are an abomination. You should get lower our taxes. Figure a way to lower our taxes. That's what you should be doing. and and we
046shouldn't be ranked 30 32,000th. That's an absurdity. I thank you for giving me the the opportunity to talk, but that's it's crazy. It really is crazy. We got to grow up. It's ridiculous the amount of taxes we're paying in the state. It's out of control. And this is the kind this is just a microcosm of what's going on. Thank you. That's your time. Any other questions? Okay. Board board member comments. I just want to thank Frank and his team for doing a phenomenal job of making all of these complex numbers easy for me to understand other than the pro property value part. But thank you for having that formula that does that. Morgan, um, for one, I would like to say that I'm proud we're part of a diverse community, that we do, uh, embrace
047our, uh, Hispanic population, and, uh, I will not be moving to Florida soon. So, uh, beyond that, um, Frank, thank you so much for that presentation. You made it very easy to understand, something very dynamic. You put in very easy terms for someone that has trouble counting to 20 with his shoes still on. So, um, thank you very much. Uh, thank you, Frank. Thank you all of you for making this thing make sense. Um, and for keeping the rates low consistently, consistently. And I'm I'm so beyond grateful to you for all for doing that. Um, also I would like to celebrate the fact that we take all students, all children, no matter where you are, where they're from, how they got here. We educate them. We celebrate them. And it's our diversity that m makes
048us stronger. And I am also not moving to Florida. Yeah. Thank you. Um this budget is um phenomenal and I think that we are we're in a good place. So thank you Frank and your team. Yep. I just wanted to say thank you Mr. Maisy and team and everyone who put in all the hard work. Everything from the the workshops, the meetings, the pamphlet that the brochure that went out. There's a lot of work that goes into this. So much appreciated. And if that is it, I will No, sorry. I just I was still heated. Um, I just want to I just want to say that it is phenomenal to look at our budget and know where we are and the fact that that I think it was budget meeting number two when all of
049our administrators and directors came in and they had shaved $880,000 off of their own last year's budgets. Just shows the fiscal responsibility that um Dr. Jones has put in place and Mr. Maisie and the cabinet has continued to oversee because you can't turn the news on or open news day these days without seeing buildings being closed and people being excised and for us to just continue status quo is just and grow is amazing. So I just wanted to commend the cabinet and the whole finance department for that. Okay, on that note, um I would like to call for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Motion. Second. Francis and Bernardet. The meeting is adjourned. Oh, wait. Do I have to say all in favor? Sorry. All in favor? Not sorry. I. All oppose. You want us
050to go on more and more? Okay. Meeting adjourned.