001all right six o' I'll call the meeting to order stand Tom roer here Evan George here Hooper here Sarah Coleman Heather Reynolds here Sue Russell de SP here any attendees that haven't please sign in when you get a chance and um we're going to take a quick executive session to start we anticipate it'll be around 15 minutes we anticipate entering to Executive session to discuss the medical financial credit or employment history of particular person or persons can I have a motion a motion and second thanks Tom um any discussion all all in favor that was quicker than motion to return to regular session at Tom in a second thank you um any discussion all in favor exensions on point for Personal Agenda a could I have a motion oh motion thank you Dev in a
002second I'll second thank you Evan um discussion all in favor posts to looking at our budget discussion all right so uh okay uh so I did I did ask haen to present this with me um as he has been working hard on preparing budget you come up here say whatever uh so just as a reminder um January we saw the executive budget March we saw the legislative budget and we're hoping for an ontime budget of April 1st but I always feel like this time of year we start getting Rumblings like it might not be an on time budget so we we will we'll certainly wait and see um how that how that plays out um we're going to walk through uh the admin uh the program and the capital budget and I will let Ken
003talk this through yeah so first thing I kind of want to point out is when we're looking at these negatives they may not necessarily mean a reduction in costs but could potentially mean a Rec so when I go into my budget season I look at all the different factors and I look at okay um something like uh rural schools association fee well is it filled to the board of education is it filled to the superintendent who uses it more so those are different things why we might have a quick recode um so for example we might see like a $177,000 increase somewhere but a $177,000 decrease in another are and it's really just those those quick flips um on the administrative side though nothing super surpris Rising um we do include all the employee benefits
004in here so this year we did see if we'll say on average a 4 and a half% increase on health insurance rates um but that dependent on plan one so plan one family individual plans to see a 9% increase this year um luckily we do not have any active employees enrolled in those plans plan one was being phased out um we do have plan one uh retirees who are enrolled in Medicare primary plans uh plan two about five four and a half to 5% increase depending on the plan in there um so that's really where you're seeing that driving employee benefits going up um same thing across the board here a lot of these are either salary driven or just general increases um we around this time year start getting quotes in um from everything
005all of the different association dues all of our um just general things that we we're always buying different quotes for equipment things like that so that's where all of those increases are driven from but on this one definitely nothing surprising um we will go over the admin and capital policies budget after that is our uh that'll be voted on April 29th sounds right April 29th I should know I work there so it's somewhere April 20th April 29th I believe though um g go to the next one so program so this is everything that we think of when we're thinking exactly student interaction with um our teachers and St students so we run all of the instruction through here we see a decrease right away that is really driven by Bose's codes so a lot of
006times we look at curriculum development and uh conferences for staff to go to um so I did kind of move some things around looking at who's attending those conferences so if it's a um professional development for the board if it's professional development for clerical staff or development for transportation staff I did kind of separate some of those things out just so we could get a real picture of um what our teachers are actually doing um special education very minimal increase we did not this is really driven by Bose's costs out of District placements for students or if we had students in residential placements that's really what's going in that special ed line not a big increase we did not see massive increases from uh Bose's tuition Bose Services um so nothing surprising there occupational education
007that is really typically strictly uh cvtech um but we also run incarcerated youth programs out of that as well so that's really where that uh decrease is being driven from is those costs um cbtech is on a fiveyear rolling average so that's why that rate is always going to be different even if the tuition changes and the tuition goes up we might have lower enrollment based on that 5year average so that that line is constantly up and down for a lot of districts um library media special school so that is going to be anything with Library um if we had like a videography class those types of things I'll run through this line minor increases really driven by subscription costs so the um software used for Library loans and um giving books out so we
008see a pretty big increase there this year um and then as well as other just softwares that we use uh day in and day out computer assisted instruction again we're seeing a increase this is I to say but driven by bosies um we're seeing reduction in some costs not a lot um but this is an area where we're going to buy a lot of our Chromebooks we're going to buy um front line for IEP and 504 plans Frontline for um what's it called staff attendance um our Wi-Fi all of those different bills are going to run right through there guidance healthy pschology co-curricular your clubs our school psychologists um are both in here um so minor decrease but that's just due to some contractual obligations with different again softwares and things like that so I
009really try and make sure that if it's a software that only the nurse uses making sure that it's right there coded with that nurse um inter Scholastic Sports so everything from officials coaching salaries our equipment our uniforms everything like that going to run right through there so we do um minor increases really just due to again contractual salaries every year those salaries go up for coaches um different things like that transportation is like the big one it's like well what's happening there you remember we are looking at purchasing um additional buses this year so that goes right in that line um and takes care of about 95% of that increas is just due to those bus purchases this year um but anything Transportation sub bus drivers uh regular salaries for bus drivers things like that
010and then our Central store room is there's a couple salaries in there but it's really driving all the different uh regular school supplies so your printer ink um Art tensils Pens all all of that stuff flows through that line um I typically think of the central store room as the catch all if we are going to use it and we don't quite know where it goes we put it in the central store room but it's always typically a consumable item that we use year rear yeah so some these costs are coming out of capital uh right here this Transportation Transportation are any of the other categories P not on this slide on the next slide um if you'll remember from the last board meeting we talked about um a tractor a truck those things yes
011we do drive them but they're not Transportation um they fall under uh facilities and plants so transportation is anything that transports students yes um and that is an aable line so we have to to be really careful of what we put there making sure that it's benefiting students and transportation of those students if we go on again capital u so operation maintenance a plant um smaller increases but again if I took out those tractors the um and the plow truck that we do need to purchase those are very minimal increases we're just looking at um things like electricity all of our actual utilities I will say we are looking very very carefully at things like electricity water sewer right now um last month I did look at our January 2024 electricity bill versus our January
0122025 electricity bill was $12,000 different it had gone up that much um in one year so that is another driving factor of that is we have to be very careful we use two three different electricity providers we use National Grid nice EG depending on which building you're at and then we also use smck which is the school Municipal energy Cooperative so it's a collection of schools that runs through Eerie one bosies um and they kind of take all of our bills from National Grid ieg and they disperse it out so it's a Cooperative purchasing program which saves us a lot of money um refund of property tax we get these every year um typically right about now is when the courts are settling a lot of those judgments so we get those um property tax
013refunds people who um win their case to lower their assessments um that does happen quite often and then the inter fund transfers mainly driven by two inter fund transfers we transfer money to the cafeteria to cover any deficits that they may be facing and then we also transfer money to the special Aid fund every year special Aid fund what we're transferring there is to cover summer special education costs at osis and then cafeteria is just general operating costs and then finally Debt Service that is something that you will see year over-year start to decrease unless we were to take on another Capital project that would see an increase um The Debt Service ties directly into our tax cap though so anything that you see here is an additional item on that tax cap that gets
014factored in um but that is just existing debt from uh mainly the pre merger time so Elizabeth Town Lewis is still paying off Elizabeth toown Lewis is still paying off a capital project from years ago uh Westport has one remaining as well um and then if they have any debt on buses before things like that we assume all that debt question yeah going back to Transportation those are propositional items correct and so same with the truck correct and Tra Y what happens if part goes through and other part does not come through excess of money or they would be have to be removed pardon they would have to be removed so that they're voted on separately it wouldn't be any excess of money however because that money is currently in a reserve so we just
015wouldn't pull the money out of it's not like the money would just general yeah um so with that we're we're coming out 2526 current budget we're looking at 16.4 million that will change could change um we still do not have final Aid numbers from the state um like uh Dr Meyer had mentioned before um April 1st is the state deadline last was April 3rd work sessions are currently scheduled through April 9th right now so it could be tomorrow or it could be well well in the future um hoping sooner rather than later because I believe the board here adopts the budget on April 10th 10th so I could potentially have 12 hours to finalize a budget um depending on when the state comes out um but that's that's currently where we stand um and again
016Mo 513 000 of that is driven from those bus purchases um and the other equipment needs coming right out of the reserve so 5.24% increase is actually a 1.95% increase if we removed those purchases um sorry I didn't didn't mean to advance that but that that that is exactly what Hayden is saying right here um so if you look at that so the 5.2% on this Top Line um that's still the 3.08% uh tax levy increase but down here that asterisk is showing you that if you were to remove all the the transportation um the you know the truck and and uh the tractor it would only be a 1.9% increase so and again we're we're doing some of these Transportation purchases now as we're planning for um the shift to electric buses we're trying
017to get some of these purchases in while we still can while we're waiting to see what the state does does with that so uh if we take a look at our uh history um you can see we've had some pretty small uh budget increases um over the years you know been been as high as uh 2.9 uh percent but um you know our our transportation purchases are are a little more this year than we've seen previously then you look at the tax lob increase 3.08 uh that kind of Falls in line with where we've been we've been as high as 4.15 we've been as low as 0.98 so uh 3.08 is you know kind of Falls in that in that range where we've been uh before um that no real update this is really uh
018just same thing as the last meeting um ta tax cap it's what the increase looks like uh the tax levies is you know 8.5 million and again just comparative to the region looking at any anywhere from 1.1% to a 9.8% uh we're still two districts are still considering exceeding the cap um just for for your awareness and uh if you take a look at what does this mean for our taxpayers um if you look here if you remember those of you that have seen the budget presentation before we have our different towns here Chesterfield Elizabeth Town Essex Lewis Mariah and Westport um are the towns that are in the districts uh um for for example Mariah We just have a handful of parcels in Mariah a few more in Essex and just a couple in
019Chesterfield but you know the majority of our property is in Westport Lewis and Elizabeth Town um if I can draw your attention to this column here the equalization rate column this is based on uh the assessments how recently the assessments were and if you look at Westport and Lewis which is why they're highlighted they are at 100% Equalization rate okay because they're at 100% Equalization rate they're going to have the lowest tax rate per thousand if you go all the way over you can see that's just over $1 11.6 uh so that would be you know roughly $111 per thousand uh so if you had um you know a $100,000 house uh it would be um $1100 the M that there so but but if you look at some of the other some of the
020other towns um where the rate is less than 100 uh start with Essex for example is the next highest at 93.6% they would be paying 11 $11.74 per thousand uh then you look at Chesterfield would be paying $13.10 per thousand uh Elizabeth Town would be paying 13 .93 94 per thousand and the Mariah $16.18 per thousand so I get the question of why why the discrepancy it's because of the equalization rate um the way that that that that gets changed is really for these towns to do another assessment and to uh to presumably increase the um the valuation of of the properties any any else no I think I just I put this slide up at a different budget presentation recently and I got the wide eyes a lot of num wasn't me um so
021when we look at the assess value this is the number that changes every year I will tell you it never goes down I think all of us and who are homeowners can feel that that our assessed value never goes down um that Equalization rate just said uh he had explained um a lot of times the way that the state looks at it is market value versus assessed value so in these two towns what they're saying is if a house went on the market what it's going to sell for is roughly what it's assessed at if it's lower it means that you are typically selling your house for more than it is assessed at which is why it computes these numbers and you see that their assessed value is lower than their full valuation so they're
022saying that this is actually what those properties are worth if they were to sell on the open market this is just a calculation that we do every year to talk about the share of the taxes that they pay so if we have one pot of money and we have this many Parcels in this town this many in this town we compute a percentage of how much they share of the total tax dollars that they have to pay which then takes this percentage multiplies it by our total Levy and gives me this number so then that your this to the counties well in this case the one County and they generate the tax bills and show us this is what everyone's going to pay so they will take that 18 uh Chesterfield really is that low
023so that $118,000 that the residents of Chesterfield pay and then they split it up based on those assets values of those homes multiply it by that number there's your tax bill it's a very very complex one and I usually sit down for about a week every August and shut my door and have to calculate all that out multiple times um and then the county is fantastic because you send it to them two seconds later they tell you you're wrong and you get to fix it um but they take care of everything for us um and then the state gets involved on those Equalization rates so how does that compare so uh I'm sorry oh I just had a question what is our current fund balance and is that applied to the next year's budget needs
024so we haven't we we have not needed to use our fund balance to offset the budget since we merged uh that that was used um I know in Westport for for a very long time prior to the merger I don't know I don't couldn't tell you going back how far but you know for for at least you know five to 10 years and I know in the budgets I saw for Lewis at least for you know a handful of years before the fund balance was used that that has definitely been one of the advantages of merging um that we've not had to use any of our fund balance to help offset the budget I can tell you that uh I believe that every other school district in the region is using at least some part
025of their fund balance to offset their budget and this is going to be the seventh budget that we've done we not have to do that so that that's pretty great so what happens to that money then it's just in the funds it a cruise interest and it'll keep building so really what it's it's there as a safety measure if there is a safety measure so if we have a economic time like 2008 and all of a sudden our state aid plum or something happens they redo the foundation a formula and we get hit um it's there as that safety mechanism so so so that that that's the number that they want you to be under 4% right that's also the number that most small districts are you know usually closer to like the 8 to
02610% range when we get over that 8 to 10% range that's when we will put it in resarch usually um but but yeah we haven't had to use that which has been been I think a huge huge uh Plus for us um okay so um yeah about all talk so on this one we just take we that big long formula that we just showed to calculate the tax rates we do it for every single District find out where everyone stands obviously fat typically always middle of the pack um when we do that this year though we look this is based on 2425 tax rates f is definitely on the lower end um you see just these four districts five districts that are um below Bap Valley for the actual tax rate um so we do
027range pretty drastically you see if they a district has a much higher assessed value their tax rate is significantly lower so one of the highest tax uh assess values in our region is screwn Lake with all their property value there so you see their tax rate significantly lower um I say that but at the same time platsburg has the highest assess value but they also have the same uh the highest tax rate rate um but that's typically what we see the higher the assess value the lower the tax rate um and then these numbers will change next year when we get new assess values and we put in the new budget you'll see them all kind of um most of them will stay pretty even but uh districts that exceed the tax calculus we can
028go up pretty significantly and this uh 1155 you'll notice that 1155 is not on the sheet anywhere it's an average of those numbers basically right yeah yeah so this one obviously we had mentioned a couple times about the incentiv that starts going to start going to go start going down due to the merger um tax levy increase we've gone through kind of how those are calculated I did want to point out with ERS TRS those are not just numbers that we make up there in actual calculation so ERS um is really driven by those tiers right now and each individual district is is completely different um so the more tier three members that you have working in your District the more the district pays because those employees do not contribute to the retirement system whereas
029if you look at a tier six member who is contributing between I think the lowest is 3% and the highest is six% of a salary that's offsetting our costs so it's it's a cost sharing um so I do predict we will start to see ERS slowly decline because those tier three members are getting to retirement age um if that waiver continues though that's that's another piece as we still technically pay a small portion of those employees um TRS is a rate that's given to us every year from TRS so um typically beginning of March end of February we get a letter from TRS saying this is your percentage it applies to every single School District in the state um and then middle of June we get the final and that that gives us our final
030so we just budget based on what they provide to us um and then it'll it'll change usually it's a very small amount that it'll change and just adjust the budget after that and just as a reminder TRS that's the teacher retirement ands that's the employee retirements or not folks and our four propositions that we're looking at uh budget to go out at the tax cap the Board of Education member elections would be the second proposition third proposition would be the bus purchases out of the reserves and as a reminder when it comes from the reserve there's no add uh tax increase for for the taxpayer that money is already in the reserve we just P it out of the reserve and same thing for proposition four for the truck ban and the tractor purchase that's
031also coming out of that transportation and maintenance Reserve um so same as the buses no additional uh tax implication for our tax payers uh and our upcoming budget meetings will'll get updates on all the things that you've seen um if any of the numbers change we certainly report those to you and uh questions do you know how much is in our reserve for transportation maintenance 860,000 that is a very I know it's in the $800,000 range but we also have the capital reserve which has significant so does this um budget have any impact on programs or are they going to be remaining the same program should should stay uh should stay the same um yeah no no real change from program so increas is basically due to your health insurance and salaries and eating yeah
032and yep yep I'm curious is a $12,000 difference in electrical what is our average bill people in Elizabeth have said that their electric bills have gone up astronomically it's funny I don't know that number off the top of my head but I do know um so I I also oversee screen Lake we have the same thing um they are typically $5,000 more than Supreme lake so about $25,000 per month between the two the three buildings we are we're also looking at actually tomorrow um I meet with uh the company um stay out ofation where we're talking about an energy performance contract which the basic of the idea is that they are looking at ways to reduce energy consumption and they need to demonstrate um and you correct me on this but I think is it
033over 10 years 15 years 10 10 it's negoti yeah okay so over a certain number of years um you know they say if you do x amount of work you will see a return on that in 10 years or whatever number of years so that meanss tomorrow um and talk about what you know if there's a project that we can look at can make sense we did look at too we recently just got a rebate through NYSEG for LED light bulbs um that I just finalized night so there was an additional incentive to switch over to those which should help as well other question okay thank Youk we're keeping our next meeting Thursday April 10th 6m at L campus and I just want to add session um to our agenda second one we're going to
034enter executive session for number six again to discuss medical financial and credit or employment history of particular person persons um can I get a motion in a second second thank you and um discussion we don't anticipate any action coming from that you're free to stay um or or go home so uh all in favor posions passes oh e for