001Oh, >> okay. Good evening everyone. Please join me for the pledge of allegiance of student life. 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. We do want to mention that the this will be recorded tonight and it will be available on YouTube tomorrow. Okay. So, please just be a little patient with us. All right. Um I am going to I don't need a motion for me. Thank you very much. All right. What I'm going to do, welcome everyone. I'm Tracy Young, board president. We really appreciate you coming out for support. We are going to turn it over to Todd Belindorf, our interim superintendent, who is going to talk you through the budget
002presentation. >> Good evening everyone. >> Oh, >> do you have it turned on? >> I turned How about that? How about now? Okay. So, thank you everyone for coming out of our budget hearing. This is um an opportunity for us to share information about the proposed budget for Ringo Central School District for the 2627 school year. So, I'll be walking through the proposed budget and what's on the ballot on the May 19th vote. And then this is also an opportunity for anybody that has questions to ask those questions. I would ask that you hold those through the end and we'll have an opportunity to answer any questions that you might have. So before I get into the slides, just as a reminder of the information that is available that goes along with tonight's presentation, everything
003can be found on the district website under the budget section. So for tonight's presentation, there is the slide deck that we'll be walking through um up on the screen. And then there's two other supporting documents that are important that connect with tonight. One is called the uh budget workbook. So again, this is found online. This has a very detailed information about the entire budget that is proposed for next year. And then the other document is the budget newsletter which will be in the mail tomorrow. Um, thank you to Scar and the work that she does to put all this together and get it in the mail. So, that will be coming to everybody in your mailbox in the next couple of days. So, with that, we will jump into tonight's presentation. For all of our
004budget work and all of our budget presentations, we always like to start with the district goals. All of the work that we do around budget when we plan for our budget for the next year, we ground the work in the goals to make sure that we are paying attention to what we value as a district. So this slide is a reminder of those three main goals that we work on as a district consistently each year. And the quickest way to think about it is our curriculum, our culture, and our community. So those three words really define the main goals that we focus on. Curriculum, culture, and community. and we make sure that in the budget development, we're aligning our work and our priorities with those goals. So, the ballot proposition when you come to vote
005on May 19th, I'm getting a gesture from Scott. You think the other one will work? Yes, you can still hear me. All right, that's Thank you, Scott. Free up my hands. Um, so on the ballot that you will see on May 19th, this is the list of items that will be on the ballot. The first one is that school budget and the tax study that goes along with the proposed budget. There will be a referendum for bus acquisition. I'll have more information about that in a little bit. There will be a capital reserve. So the capital reserve is basically a savings account that we can set up as a district that we are able to put money into that helps um with future capital projects and capital costs. So, what's on the ballot is just
006the ability to create that account. And then there's the two libraries, the Greenville Public Library and the Winslerville Public Library. They actually collect funds. Um, we put it on the district ballot for voters to vote whether they're able to increase their budget. And last but not least, we have the board of education elections that will be on there as well. So, we're going to start with the budget um itself. So this slide is big picture overall looking at the proposed budget for the 2627 school year. Um starting with the current school year, our budget is 37,600,000. The proposed budget for next year is 38,900,000. So that increase is that 1.2 million. So you will see that number throughout tonight's presentation because that's one of the significant numbers to just be aware of. Our budget from
007this current year to next year is increasing by that 1.2 million. So that also equates to a 3.34 percentage increase. So our current budget is being increased by 3.34 for next year. So the top half of this slide is about the budget overall, what we spend as a district, the total amount that we're proposing we will spend in next year. the bottom half of this slide and then the other most important piece of information for voters is one part of our revenues which is the tax levy. So the amount that we collect from our local taxpayers is that tax levy in this current year for 2526 that number was approximately 18,900,000. The proposed tax levy for next year is at 19,700,000. So the increase amount here from this year to next is 732,000 which equates
008to that 3.86%. When we take that similar information and just look at it over five years, this slide shows for each of the five years back to 2022 23 school year, what the total budget was, what the change was, the increase from the prior year to that year, and then what the percentage increase was. So on the very bottom line again, there's that same number, that 1.2 2 million which is the increase from current year to next year and that 3.34%. Also just want to point out if you look over time our increase from this year to next year is lower than the increase has been for the past two years in terms of a percentage. So what else is on the ballot? As I mentioned there will be a bus acquisition. So this is
009the vote here allows the district if approved to go out and borrow money in the form of bonds in order to purchase new buses. So the district has a well-developed bus replacement cycle that we are always reviewing and refining to make sure that we are getting the best value out of our current buses but also making sure that we don't get to a place where our buses are so old that we're putting more money into them than what we should be. So in that projected bus replacement cycle, the projection is for next year to purchase six buses. Um four of those are large full-size buses and two are smaller buses. The total amount that is being asked for in terms of borrow money is just over a million dollars for those six buses. And just
010a side note, we are in talking about buses, these are all diesel buses. So for all the conversation that you might hear about the transition to EV or electric buses that is still in the future for us for next year we are are sticking with our diesel purchases the public library. So Greenville Public Library and Welville Public Library submit to us requests that the money is is collected and approved through the budget um the school budget vote. This is not school money, right? This is money that specifically goes to the libraries. So for next year, the Greenville Public Library is asking for an increase of $600, which brings their total budget next year to $45,700. And the Wlerville Library is asking for an increase of $610, which would bring their total budget to 31128. If
011these are not approved or they're declined by voters, the the libraries get the same amount that they did this year. Board of Education. So, also on the ballot will be the election for board members. So, a little bit of a unique situation this year. And if there's questions about this, we can certainly answer them towards the end. But you're actually this year voting for four board member seats. Two of those seats are three-year terms that would begin July 1 of the 2026 and go through June 30th of 2029. And then two other seats were actually vacated this year by James Good Jr. and Angela Marello who both resigned from the board and created those vacancies. So two folks were appointed to those seats for the remainder up until the vote. So the other two seats
012are one year terms that technically start May 20th, the day right after the vote, and go through June 30th of 2027. And then the names listed here, there is a random draw that D and Pearson does district clerks. The names are all just put in a hat and they're pulled out to determine the order that they show up on the ballot. And the order that is on the screen is the same order that you will see on the ballot. So we have five community members that are hunting for the four open seats. Great. So, we're going to go back to the budget and do a little bit of a deeper dive and look a little closer at some of the different components that make up that 2627 school year budget. So, the first way to
013look at the budget is actually required by New York State to present it in what's called the three comp three-part budget. Three components and those components are called the administrative, the capital, and the program. So, three different areas of the school district budget that we kind of slice up the pie from the whole budget into those areas. So the pie chart up there shows the significant majority of the three-part budget is made up by the program which is just over 73% of the budget. Capital is the next one which is just under 17% and the administrative component is just under 10%. So we're going to look at these each um individually with a little bit more information. The important thing to note here again on the bottom of this chart you'll see those same numbers.
014So the 38,900,000 is the total budget. That 1.2 is the change from current year to next year. And the percentage change is that 3.34%. So looking a little closer, we'll start with the administrative component. So up on the screen, you'll see all the different categories that fit into the administrative component. Um this includes administrative costs that go along um with the administration or the leadership of the districts and the buildings along with the clerical staff that support those administrative roles. This also includes things like schoolboard costs, insurance such as liability insurance. And overall this has a 2.3% increase from the current year to next year. On each of these slides there's a lot of information. There's details on all of this in that budget workbook that I mentioned at the beginning. We're not going to
015walk through every single individual line item, but for each component, I'll point out a couple items that I think are important for folks just to hear about and understand. So on this slide, one of the larger percentage increases falls over legal services at an 8.33% increase. That's based on current year usage of legal, the variety of reasons that we use legal services as a district. Just looking at last year and this current year, the rates and the expenses that we have in that area, um we're projecting that that should be increased for next year to cover the needs of the district. And then another one on this slide is an 8.96% increase, which is for public information and printing. This is actually um not a total increase overall but it shows up as an increase
016here because we shifted it from what's called a Boseis code to a non-boseies code. The reason for that is we found that we were not able to get aid on the actual printed materials. Um and Sierra Pole, our communication specialist, has done great work working independently with some different printers to find better rates and also better products. So hopefully you noticed that in the budget newsletter that came from a different printer this year that they were very happy with the product. Um, so in order to do that, we just had to shift the cost to a different code. So when we look at this slide, it looks like it's a bigger increase, but it's actually really just a shift from one place in the project to another. On to the capital component. So the capital
017component includes salaries and benefits of all the folks that work in maintenance and our custodial staff. It also includes debt service. So debt payments that we make for money that we previously borrowed for either bus purchase or for previous capital work. Um and any facilities cost that goes along with maintaining and operating the physical plant, the physical part of our campus. So this component has a 4.79% increase from this current year to next year. And just a couple of notes on this slide. One is employee benefits. I'll mention this again on the next slide but or on a few slides. Our employee benefits, a portion of that is the health insurance and prescription plans for the employees that we have that are covered by those plans. This year, actually each year for the past several
018years, that has been a significant increase um in the world of of school budgets and school finance. This is an area that you just consistently see increases and large amounts of larger amounts needed each year. Um, so for Greenville Central School District, our health insurance plans that we provide from this year to next year are going up by 7%. And the prescription plans that we provide are going up 20.5%. So that all goes into in this slide, you'll see where it says employee benefits, um, that is a bigger percentage increase and a larger dollar value that goes along with it that's directly related to those health insurance and prescription costs. And then the second one to note on here is listed as serial bonds. So that those are bonds that we borrow money. Um in
019this case, that number is going up because of bus purchases that we've made in the past couple of years with the EV or the electric bus mandate that is currently on the books. Um several years ago, we made some shifts to our bus purchasing cycle in order to maximize the number of diesel buses that we could purchase prior to the requirement of purchasing electric buses. So for that reason over the past couple of years we've seen that line for our debt for bus purchases has increased but it's for good reason in the long term. So on this slide you'll see that that number is also a little higher on the percentage side and a larger change in dollar value. And the third part of a three-part budget or component is the program component. So this
020includes all the salaries and benefits for all of our teachers and the staff that interact with students on a daily basis. Um it also includes all the instructional materials, equipment, a variety of Bosey's programming. So that could be from the programs that we send students to for CTE through BOSIES or it could be you purchase things like some of our software programs that purchased through BOSEIS. All those fall into this program component. This also includes transportation costs from the running of our transportation department. It does not include the actual purchase of buses that was in that previous component of capital. So same here a couple of notes. Um one is contract transportation. You'll see a 17.79% increase which is significant. Um that is transportation primarily for students that are going to different placements, specialized placements
021that are not on campus. So those are students that require different placement. We can't provide them the services that they need here on campus. So they're going to either different private or public placements around the region. To get those students there, we have to contract with different transportation agencies. Um and you've just seen those costs continually increase over the past couple of years. And that is another area for next year that is um a noted increase on the program slide. So, the three-part budget is one way to break down the budget to look at the different categories. This slide, think of putting those three parts all back together as the whole. So, you have the whole pie, the budget back together again. And this is dividing it up in a different way just to look
022at it in a different in a different way. So, this breaks it up by category and those categories are listed down the left hand side. So here the first one's salaries and benefits. Whereas a three-part budget breaks up salaries and benefits for those different components into each of those areas. This way of breaking up the budget just takes every single employee, all the salaries, all the benefits for all of our employees and puts it into one line so that you can see in total what does the district pay for salaries and benefits. The important point on this slide, you can see it in the pie chart, is the most significant cost for the district is salaries and the benefits that go along with it. That comes with good reason, right? We are a human enterprise.
023We are working with students and children every single day to do that. We have a lot of folks and specialized certified different areas to provide those services to our students. So, it makes sense that our largest expense is always going to be those salaries and benefits. Um, and then you can see there's a breakdown of some different categories. Contractual services, OEIs, debt service, interf transfer, and equipment. Same thing here. I'm not going to go through each one and talk about the changes, but just a couple of things to note. Um, on the debt service line, that is the same increase that I talked about previously because of purchasing those additional diesel buses. Um, that that number is going up. Another one to note here on the very bottom line which is a decrease which we
024don't always see very often right a lot of our costs just increase yeartoear um but because it's listed here as equipment materials supplies and textbooks is going down as $61,000 the reason for that is this current year we had a very specific one-time purchase of a bus lift for our bus garage that was an increased cost in this current year budget of about $68,000 we purchased that it's done we won't We purchased another one for many, many years. So, we were able to pull that budget line back down. So, it looks or is that line going down, but I don't want people to think like we're cutting the materials and supplies that teachers and staff need to do their job every day. No, those supplies are staying consistent. This is a decrease because of that
025one time purchase that happened this year. I also just want to note on this slide in the budget development process we go through and the important piece at the end is we have to have a balanced budget. We have to make sure that the expenditures that we're planning match up with the revenue that we're expecting to bring in as a district. So to do that this year we went through and we always look at any open positions. Um so I think it's important to note in doing that this year we do have three positions that from retirements um are open positions that In order to balance the budget, we are not filling those three positions. Looking at shifting those responsibilities and making sure we're covered of all the needs of our students, but to be
026fiscally responsible, we're always looking at the total expenditures for the district, the positions that we have, and if we are able to reduce those positions. So, there are three teaching positions that won't be filled, and there's also one driver position that we are not filling for next year. So, those came out of the budget. Now we will shift over to the revenue side. So the money that we bring in as a district fits into four categories. Um appropriate fund balance. A way of thinking of that is money that we currently have on hand in this current year budget that we're going to hold on to and pull into next year with very specific purpose of using as a revenue source in next year's budget. So that's called the appropriate fund balance. Um the next one
027down is real estate taxes. Obviously that's one of the larger of our revenue sources along with state aid being a significant revenue source and then the last one is local sources and some other revenues that is a smaller percentage overall. If you look at the pie chart, the two big pieces here of revenue are the state aid at about 44% of our revenue and real estate taxes, the money we collect from our community is just over 50%. Look at this a little closer. Looking at state aid, there are two main categories of state aid. The first is foundation aid, which is a formula that is based on a variety of data that each district has as an individual district. All those factors go into a formula and it says how much a district is supposed
028to get. The easiest way to think about it is based on a per pupil, how many students we have here at Green Plainville times a set amount per student goes into that formula and gives us an amount that we should receive called foundation aid. What we found over time, our enrollment here at Greenville is slightly declining yeartoear. So when our data is put into that formula, it would actually show that next year we're supposed to receive less state aid than we did this year. Well, New York State has identified something called hold harmless, meaning no district will receive less aid in the next year than it did in the current. So, for that reason, we are now what's called a hold harmless district for the 2627 school year. Um, unfortunately, at this time, the state
029budget is still not approved. So these numbers are based on the governor's room that came out in January and then we make adjustments and just based on what we've heard at the state level. We're projecting that we will have approximately a 2% increase in foundation aid. So foundation aid is that first main category. It's based on a formula and we get a set amount as a district. Other areas of state aid are called expense driven aids. Meaning the amount we get back at aid is based on how much we expend or how much we spend each year. So a good example of this one is transportation aid. Um we get a number from the state in January that does the state's best guess or estimate of what they think we're going to spend in this
030current year for transportation and then what we would get back as that expense driven aid in next year's budget. because we have better local data. We know and can track our own expenditures here as a district. This is an area that in my office, we go through and we project what we think we're going to spend in transportation and we adjust what we predict our aid will be in next year's budget. So that is true for um transportation aid. the high tax and public high cost or sorry public high cost and private excess costs are based on special education students and their placements and building age. So those are all things that we're able to do a better projection um and come up with an essay. So all that to say looking at this slide
031you'll see a column that says 2627 proposed executive budget. That's what came out from the state in January. So that's what we started our foundation. It also shows 2526 meaning this current year what was budgeted for each of those areas and then 26 27 it has the proposed. So from the proposed to the governor you'll see some differences. Those differences are because of the reasons I just explained. We do our best estimating inhouse to project what we will get in aid for next year. On the bottom of this slide, you will see overall we are expected to get about $580,000 increase overall in state aid, which is a 3.5% increase from current year. Shifting to the other main category of aid is our tax levy. So the tax levy, we start with what's called the
032property tax cap formula. So often times in New York State it's referred to as the 2% tax gap which is really a misnomer because it's really not 2%. Um but it's an easy way to say it. The property tax gap formula is actually a eightstep formula that has a variety of information about our current year budget and current year data that goes into this formula that is set by the state. And from that formula, we get the total highest amount that we could increase taxes that would still only require a simple majority, meaning one vote over that 50% when we go out to to the community for a vote. Um, so this year, going through that formula on the left hand side of this slide on the bottom, it shows that that property tax cap,
033the maximum percentage increase would be 4.17%. or an increase of $791,000 in collecting of taxes through the budget process and conversation with the board and understanding all the different factors that go into the budget development process. Um if you look on the right hand side the proposed budget that is going out to voters on May 19th um we are under that property tax. So most importantly that means that we only need a simple majority for the budget to be approved. Um, and this shows the the fiscal responsibility piece that we really strive for at Greenville in that we are under that tax cap and we are going out at a 3.86% increase, which is just over $732,000 increase from current year to next year. The difference in those two numbers, just for people that are
034interested, is in the middle. That is that 58,850. Mean if we went to the total amount of the tax cap we would have collected an additional 5850 but again we are at that 3.86%. So this slide takes that information and again gives us a 5-year look back. So always good to look back to where we have been in recent years. So back to 22 23 all the way up to current year and projecting next year. Um you can see the percent increase for next year is 3.86 that very bottom line which yes is higher than what we had in the past couple of years prior to this. Also an important note here is that the 3.86% is the total percentage increase on the entire tax levy. So the total amount that we will collect from
035taxpayers. That does not mean that each one of you as an individual taxpayer is going to see a 3.86% increase. It might be higher, it might be lower. That's all based on a variety of factors that go into the actual creation of tax bills. So up here you'll see Greenville's school district is made up of 11 th towns in three different counties. And there's a variety of factors that go into what the actual rate is that you each experience as a taxpayer. um that's really set over the summer when we get a final assessment roles from the each town assessor and it goes into our overall formula to calculate the tax bills. State aid and tax levy are those two significant largest majority of our revenue. This slide just looks at some other revenue sources
036that we we take in as a district. Um here you will see on the bottom there is a decrease here overall. So I just want to explain why. The primary reason is for the past several years we've had a health insurance refund. That actually goes back to the amount that the district paid back in like 1920 or 2019 2020 um for our health insurance. And at the end of that year, what the health insurance companies actually paid was less than what we had paid in as a district. So there was this health insurance refund that got spreaded out over multiple years so that districts could incorporate it into their budget. That was a good revenue source for a number of years. Um those refunds have since been non-existent. Um so what we are seeing as
037a refund that will come to us in next year's budget is significantly less than what we received in this current budget. So overall there is a decrease here just under for just over $30,000 forgative -2.62 decrease. So those are all the components of the of the budget um both on the expenditure side and the revenue side for the 2627 school year. One of the questions that always comes up that's important to talk about is what if the budget is defeated? So, if on May 19th the community votes down and the overall vote is a no on our budget, um right after that there's two options that the board would have to make. Option one is we can go out with a second vote. It could be the exact same budget that goes up for a
038second vote or we can go back and make adjustments to that budget and put it up for a second vote. But that is one option is to go out to a second vote. Um the other option is the board can adopt what is called a contingency budget. If we went after that second vote and it was also defended and it was a no vote. Um, here state law requires that we would then automatically go to that contingency budget. So, there's a lot of information up there. Some of the key pieces is that if we were if we had to go to a contingency budget, the tax levy in next year's budget could not exceed the tax levy that was this current year. And that would mean when you put everything together, we would actually have
039to reduce next year's budget by $732,000. So again, big take takeaway here is if we went to a contingency budget, we would have to go back to everything that I just presented in all the different components of the budget and reduce out over $732 of spending. There are also very specific rules of what can and can't happen in a contingency budget. So, one of them as a specific example is we can't purchase any equipment. Anything in an equipment line would automatically be removed. And there's other rules that go in there, too, but just as one example. That brings us to the budget vote. So, budget vote will begin Tuesday, May, May 19th. Polls open at 1:00 and close at 9:00. This all happens like it does every year in the Scott and Ellis cafeteria down
040at the elementary school. And the bottom of this slide just as a recap what you will see on the ballot on that day. The pro the proposed 2627 school budget, the bus acquisition, the capital reserve, the libraries for Greenville and Winslerville, and then the board of education elections. And that brings us to our opportunity for questions. Um, so just as a time check, it is right now 6:33. We are happy to answer any questions that you have. Um, however, we will at around 6:50. If we're still going with questions, we will end the questions just so that we can shift as we do have the meet the candidates tonight starting at 7:00. So, and if we don't get to your question, you still have them, I will certainly follow up with you, but we'll do
041our best to answer any questions we can tonight. So, Sierra, our communication specialist, has so graciously offered to be our microphone specialist. >> I didn't know where I was. So if you have a question, you can raise your hand and Sierra will bring the microphone to get this year. >> State this year. Go back.