001Okay. Once or twice, but it's usually like the long. Are we good? Whatever. All right. I would like to call to order these. Um, yeah. This is the budget hearing on May 12th. I keep wanting to say it's May 13th, but it's not. So, I'd like to call to order the May 12th budget hearing. Pledge is over there. for your pledge of I aliance 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 right and presentation of the budget thank you folks appreciate everyone being here for our uh 2526 budget presentation um just a brief agenda for our budget uh our budget hearing tonight. Um we're going to talk about a state budget update and visit our
002uh 20 2025 2026 budget goals. Um we're going to visit our 2025 2026 budget goals. Excuse me for a second. And uh talk about we're going to compare the revenue and expenditures of our state uh of our state budget. Money coming in, money going out. Um highlight our use of reserves. how our reserves doing year-over-year. Um, and finally, compare the gap. Excuse me for a second. My apologies, but uh the presentation I had, it seems to be a different presentation than the one I have. So, I just want to make sure I open the correct presentation. If you will just bear with me. There we go. That's the right one. Mhm. because otherwise it doesn't match what's in your documents. Once again, my apologies. That's better. So, we're going to visit our 2526 budget goals
003and take a look at the highlights from the state budget. Um, part of every complete budget or balanced budget for a school district is to compare the expenditures against the revenues. And so we're going to look at dollar in dollar out and match our budget of uh $47,386,760. We're going to break down where our revenues come from and do a breakdown of our expenditures and finally talk about our tax levy history. We'll also have a budget analysis over the last 5 to six years. How have our school district's budget grown year-over-year and how has the tax levy increase been during those uh sequential years? Um, finally, we'll talk about what an approximate increase over the seven different municipalities look like, our ballot propositions, our four board candidates running for two board seats, and we'll save
004some time for questions, and hopefully we can do this all in about 15 to 18 minutes to give our candidates some time to get up here and introduce themselves. So, here we go. Part of our budget goals for this year, we knew that the state budgets uh were getting a little more leaner year-over-year. The co stimulus funding ended in September of 2024 and the state had made it very clear that moving forward school districts can expect to see lesser than average increases year-over-year in terms of their state aid. Last year, there were several school districts across the state that got no increase in state aid. And by the time the state budget passed, they had uh essentially through hold harmless, they got the same dollar amount of state aid that they received 2 years ago.
005So no increase. We were fortunate enough to get an increase last year. We many school districts were expecting no increase or a minimal increase. And that's exactly how things played out across the state. So we wanted to be very mindful and we wanted to be very careful as folks retired. We wanted we wanted to really ask ourselves the question, could we save some funds by not staffing those positions while maintaining programming with that being small class sizes at the elementary school and elective offerings or of a variety of offerings at the secondary school. We also wanted to protect protect our long-term availability of district reserves. In a handful of slides, I'm going to highlight where our district reserves are and how much we use this year, how much we're looking to use next year. And
006finally, at the end of each year, we hope to save some money so that we can take some of that money and apply them to the bus purchase reserves. So year-over-year, we can continue to upgrade our fleet and also allocate some money to capital reserves so that every five to five or so years, we go out and do a capital project to constantly update and upgrade our infrastructure and build for the future. So, the state budget passed through, this was one of the later state budgets that's passed in recent years. Um, based on the governor's proposal in January, the governor had proposed a minimum 2% increase for all school districts across the state. And that's where it landed for Phelps Clifton Springs. What does that 2% increase look like? It looks like an additional $414,353
007for our school district in terms of state aid. Another uh piece of the state budget highlight was that the BOSI's salary aid on instructional salaries for more than a decade or even two decades that number has been stuck at $30,000. There's been a tremendous amount of advocacy for years to raise that dollar amount and it's finally raised to 40,000 this year, 50,000 next year and 60,000 the year after. So the Boseies aid we receive back as school districts on instructional salaries is going from 30 to 40 and then to 50 and then to 60. The retirey earnings cap for folks that can come back and work they have to maintain salary up to 35,000 in certain sectors. That cap has been extended so they can go over the cap for an additional 2 years. But
008the state is making it very clear that 2 years from now that is going to sunset and the retirey cap is going to be back in full effect. a smartphone ban or from bell-to-bell schedule or distraction-free schools as the governor called it. The governor has allocated a chunk of money towards distraction-free schools. We're yet to see what that's going to look like. They haven't uh sent out too much documentation regarding that, but we're just kind of sitting back and seeing how this plays out. And then finally, a 2-year extension to implementation of zero emission buses. The governor had already proposed an initial two-year extension and now they have applied another two-year. So essentially, it's a 4-year extension. Mind you, when this uh law came out, it said 2027 was the first year you can only
009purchase an electric bus. So, that had a 2-year extension, and now it's got another 2-year extension. So, it's it's almost been kicked back to 2031, which becomes the first time that you have to purchase an EV bus for the school district. So, it seems like that timeline is just getting pushed farther and farther back. So, it's it's I think it's wise for the districts who are still sticking with their diesel buses to kind of just sit back and see how this plays out in the future. All right. So, we talked about dollar in, dollar out. What does a balanced school budget look like? We've got expenditures on the left hand side uh of the chart and we've got revenue on the right hand side of the chart. Every expenditure by law has to be broken
010down into three different categories. Administrative, program, and capital. Administrative across several if not all school districts is always the smallest portion of a school budget followed by capital and then comes the largest portion of a school budget which is program teaching and learning which is what we're here for. So the administrative is encompassed of legal fees, insurance, administrator salaries but also Bosey's administrative charges for maintaining internet phone service and so on and so forth. So all those fall under the admin administrative program once again teaching and learning and capital is our facilities and maintenance department across across campus. So there's the breakdown of ad administrative program and capital on the right hand side is the money we bring in our revenue. The largest portion of our revenue comes from state aid. 61.5% in 2526 will
011be from state aid. Now, you could go across the state and you could you could go to some very affluent school districts where state aid is 10% of a school district's budget and their real property taxes or their tax levy make up 70 to 80%. That's not the case at Phelps Clifton Springs. A rural school like ourselves is highly dependent on state aid. And so that can make or break school district budgets year-over-year. The second biggest part is our real property taxes or our tax levy. And then comes the last two, how much we borrow from the savings account to offset our uh school budget aka our reserves. And then finally, other sources of revenue. We've got some payments in lie of taxes or pilot agreements like the Sulfur Creek Solar Farm or Fingerlakes Railroad.
012Um and we also have a healthy portion of our facility we rent out to Boseies. So that Bosey's rent and capital expenses make up the other portion of our school budget. uh of our revenue, hence the four categories right there. But once again, in the left column and the right column, both numbers tie out to $47,386,760. So, we talked about the proposed revenue year-over-year. The first one is the state aid. Once again, increase of 414,353. What does that represent? That represents the 2% increase that the governor's budget, the governor's proposal and the state budget that passed. That's what the 2% increase represents. Real property taxes. Second one in line, there's an increase year-over-year of $316,882. What does that represent? That represents a 2% tax levy increase year-over-year. reserves and debt service. We're looking to borrow
013an additional $69,787 from our reserves. In a couple slides, you'll notice this year we borrowed $740,000 approximately. Next year, we're borrowing just north of 800,000 and that's the 69,000 additional we're taking from our savings to close the school district budget. And then finally, other other this is the first time in a very long time the other part of the budget is going up by nearly $442,000. And that is because our 10-year Boseies lease has been renegotiated. This has been 2 years in the making. Later tonight, the board will be approving uh that Bosey's lease for the next 10 years, and that is generating an additional $440,000 per year over the next 10 years, or roughly $4.42 million. And this could not have come at a better time because once again, the state aid we received
014is $414,000. When you look at past years, it's been well north of a million. In 2 or 3 years ago, it was $3.3 million. So that's how much leaner the state budgets have gotten, especially directed towards schooling. So just to to highlight our reserves in 2425 we borrowed 740,000 from our reserves as of March 31st. What's the condition of our reserves? Our total reserves add up to approximately $10.6 million. We have a very healthy reserve. Somewhere to the tune of 20% of our school year's operating budget we have in reserves. Now that is a very healthy number to have because of two reasons. Every school district is measured by a fiscal stress monitoring system through the office of the state controller. The for years now the state controller has given Phelps Clifton Springs no stress
015which means you are in a healthy financial position. Secondly, when we go out to borrow money, the first thing they the Moody's rating agency will do is look at our credit rating. A key piece of our credit rating is do we pay our bills on time and what is our debt to income ratio? Our reserves play a massive role in that. And what does that turn into? When we borrow money for capital projects, the people that bid through the dorm dormatory authority of the state of New York or something called DASI, the folks that bid uh or offer an interest rate when we want to borrow money give us a significantly lower interest rate because of our A+ credit rating and the health of our reserves. So once again, we're looking to go from $740,000
016this year to $89,787, that additional $69,000 we mentioned on the previous slide. So that right there is essentially money coming in. We talked about revenue. Over the next three slides, we're going to break down administrative, program, and capital, but I'm going to move through these a little quicker. in administrative. The highlight of administrative, by the way, I want to mention over the next three slides, you're going to see employee benefits on every slide because there has to be a portion of the administrative budget. Remember, there are administrators in the administrative budget. There are teachers, teaching assistants, and everybody else you can think of in the program portion of the budget. And then there there's our facilities department in the capital portion of the budget. So, you're going to see employee benefits on the next three
017screens. Together, those benefits add up to nearly $675,000. I just told you state aid only gave us $414,000. Our employee benefits itself this year are going to amount to a $675,000 increase. So, highlights of the administrative portion of the budget, we were able to save money in two different areas. First, our public relations officer. We used to have the public relations officer position through Boseies, but since we lost our public relations officer, we've actually hired a public relations officer in house and we were still able to save money uh because the Bosey's charge was significant for a public relations officer. They they added on several other administrative costs that looking back on it, we have somebody in house and it's been it's been a great transition so far. The second area we're saving money in
018this administration administrative portion of the budget is in curriculum supervision research and planning. BOSI sends us a request for services. Every year our director of curriculum and instruction, our director of special education, our director of instructional technology sit down and make a list of itener and Bosei staff that need to be brought in to support some of our teachers or support some of our departments. That request year-over-year has gone down once again, saving us about 30,000. So, where has money increased? Legal, insurance. Insurance was probably the biggest hit. A 17% increase in insurance to cover our property loss or property damage or casualty. You name it, across the board, school districts are seeing this. And finally, you've got benefits or the administrative portion of benefits program. The biggest increase in program typically year-over-year will always
019be salaries. The salaries we're looking at, we're looking at a $32,000 increase for uh teaching of regular school. We're also looking at a roughly $80,000 increase for our pupil support office staff, including health services. Those two right there, that makes up $380,000 or just north of $380,000 just in salary increases. Where are we saving some funds? We're saving some funds in our program for students with disabilities. Whether it's and and this has been through either students graduating from a program, graduating from high school, or a change in program for students. Year-over-year, we were able to save about $90,000. Transportation, bus driver salaries have become something incredibly competitive across the region, and we are determined to not only hire, but also retain our bus drivers. And quite frankly, we cannot afford to lose any more bus
020drivers. So there's an increase in transportation salaries of 138,000. And then finally, that $675,000 portion of health benefits we talked about, $561. The largest portion is right there under program. Once again, always the largest part of a school district budget. Lastly, capital, facilities, and maintenance of plant. Once again, we're talking about salaries for our facilities and maintenance folks, but included in capital is also utilities. One of the biggest utilities we anticipate going up just based on the bills we've started to see from NYG is our electricity bills. So that $96,000 does not just correlate to salaries. It's salaries and utilities that are playing a huge role in that operation and maintenance of plant portion of the budget going up. Employee benefits as well, their share. And then finally, no increase in debt service in terms
021of what we owe as a result of past capital projects. So those three slides make up the expenditure portion of the school budget. So once again, when we look at our tax levy history, we are asking the community to come out and vote on a 2% tax levy increase. Over the last 10 years, the tax levy increase that we have asked the community for represents the blue line. The tax cap formula each year represents the red line. This year, our tax cap formula gives us the possibility of going out and asking for a 5.15% increase pending a 50% voter approval. Historically, this district, especially over the last 10 years, has gone out well below the tax cap. We are no different. This year, we're asking for once again a 2% increase, which is less than
022half. As we compare our school district budget to budgets from the last 5 to six years, if you look in the center of that table, you'll notice in 2223, our budget increased by $2.3 million year-over-year. 23 24 3.8 million roughly. When I talked about when times were good, when COVID funding was across the board, when the state had lost uh the battle for fully funding foundation aid and finally had to fund underfunded districts like Fels Clifton Springs, the rate the state aid increases we were getting were significant and really helped us um maintain our programming so that once the federal stimulus funds had gone, we did not have to let teachers go or we did not have to let people go that we hired over the last five But now those state budgets are drying
023up. They're a little leaner. This year the budgettobudget increase is 1.243 million. 419,000 of that is just the Boseis lease. So if you think about it, the budgets are starting to look I'm going to compare them to about 2021. When I look at when I just do a comparison to the last 5 to 6 years, it looks more like where the budgets were during 2021 school year. That's about the closest comparison I can find. across seven municipalities. There are some municipalities last year that went through reassessment, some did not. So, this is once again blended. Using 2024 assessments for a $100,000 home on assessed value, what does the 2% tax levy increase look like? Folks without STAR can see an approximate increase of $4,940. with star $368 and with enhanced star $122. Once again, that's
024based on $100,000 assessed value and that's based on the 2024 assessment because the 2025 assessment won't be released until this summer. Lastly, what's the community voting on on May 20th? The four propositions to adopt the annual budget for Phelps Clifton Springs. to elect two members to the board of education to authorize our bus purchases in the amount of $888,237. We've got a total of five buses and one sport utility vehicle that we're purchasing. Buses, diesel, sport utility vehicle, gasoline. I always like to emphasize that when I talk about our bus proposition. And then finally to approve the library propositions for the two libraries, the Phelps and the Clifton Springs Library in the amount of totally $194,000. The four folks that are running for board seats, Amanda Frost, Nicholas Harur, Lindseay Marino, and Jackie Galahan Blake.
025I hope I pronounced those names correctly. If I didn't, I apologize. But before we ask those four folks to come up and introduce themselves, I just wanted to see if any members of of this audience have any questions about the school district budget so that you're better informed to vote on May 20th. It's 6:20. I tried to keep it to 20 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for the four folks to come up. I think I did that. I did say 14. It was that oops with the previous presentation. I apologize. I lost a couple minutes in in that process. Would any folks like to ask questions? This is one of the rare times you actually do get to ask questions, unlike the first three budget workshops where it's it's the board members asking questions. So, if
026you have one, please ask. If no one has any questions, the last thing I would say, I would encourage every member of the community, please come out and vote on May 20th. Thank you, folks. Thank you, Carl. Miss Carl. Thank you, Carl. All right. So, um, those of you who would like to come introduce yourselves, we'll start. We'll go in order. Amanda like We don't have a Where's the podium? Podium. Oh, it's open. Podium's right there. Oh, boy. Sorry. Hi, I'm Amanda Frost. I clearly didn't think this through when having to speak in front of everyone. Um, I was born and raised in Clifton Springs. Um I took a brief time away when I attended Sunni Jio and when my husband was um in the military we were stationed at West Point. Um I we
027then moved back home after we had Lane, my son Lane and I have a daughter Hartley. Um we wanted to be close to family and now I live 3 miles from my parents house. Um my mom is Lisa Cornbball. She ran the bus garage for forever and you just can't get rid of her at the bus garage. She's working so hard and I've seen over the years everything that the bus drivers have gone through and I will fight till their death cuz I just I love them and they deserve so much. Um so currently I work for the New York State Office for People with developmental disabilities. I am an um environmental modification supervisor. So my team of social workers and I help to approve the individuals that are currently in the HCBS waiver to
028get environmental modifications. um and also vehicle modifications and we're dipping our toes into um the AT tech world. So, I am wellversed on state budgets and all that fun stuff. Uh we just passed ours so I'll get paid. Um I would like to be a part of the board because I am a lifelong learner. I love to learn new things and um you know there's always people in the community that are criticized, criticized, criticized and I like to be out there um asking questions and getting to know the reasons why they're asking these questions. And there's such a diverse um type of, you know, family out here in Clifton Springs and I would just want to be that ear for them to talk to and the voice to bring it to um the board. So
029yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you, Amanda. Thanks, Amanda. Nicholas, I overprepared. Um, everybody knows, some of you might know me, some of you might not, but Nick Carthur. Um, I'm a father in the district. I have five kids. Um, I talk a lot, so I am going to make sure that I read my notes so that we don't go over time. Uh, cuz I understand that time is precious. Um I'm not just standing here as a candidate for the board of education but also um who believes in power of learning, right? So I give back to the community. My give back to the community is I sign up to be a coach, a substitute. Um I I reach out. We do STEM programs. We do community innovation outreach programs to help improve education
030for left and right brain students. I don't want to get into that cuz I'll start talking all day. Um but some kids have a little bit different understanding of what education is. So learning with them um fighting for them and having a voice for them is extremely import extremely important to me. Um as a coach and a substitute and engineer a community member I always turn my experiences into opportunities. Um those opportunities are extremely important because every time we go through something we learn from those opportunities and make a difference um however we can. Right? The biggest thing on here is talking about continuous growth. Continuous growth um to me doesn't come from knowing everything or working on everything or changing it all up. Um it comes from continuously working together as a team. So
031the platform of what we do um for building confidence, building up young young ones to help um come here and sit through board meetings and talk about budgets, right? Those are extremely important. Those are opportunities. It happens to be them sitting here. But um I want to encourage young kids to come up and try to do this stuff to take a little bit there. Right? They were asking me about what the board meeting actually is. Wish more showed up because that would have been great. Right? So um I believe in confidence, resilience and uh belonging for kids. Right? So um working with them have given me a completely new aspect and perspective of how um our education system should work um and how we work together with teachers um and the experiences that they go
032through. Um there's nothing more frightening than standing up in front of a bunch of kids to try to teach them something that they really don't want to learn that day. Um, understanding those aspects allow me to uh step back and come up with outside the box thinking to make sure that we can drive a smarter um more funfilled environment that kids can actually learn and do that for. So me standing up here for the board of education one somebody asked me to. So I said why not? It's another challenge to to do and I tell the kids right win or lose you come out and do your best. And if they would have told me I had these people to go with against up against, I probably would have hit under the podium and not
033come up here. Um, so there's some awesome candidates running and stuff like that. So make sure you come out and vote on May 20th. If anybody has any questions for me, trust me, I have no problem talking later. So thank you. Thank you, Nick. Lindsay. Hi. So, I know most of you here um but my name is Lindsay Marino and I'm running for reelection um to the Midlife School Board. As a lifelong Ontario County resident um and a parent of three kids in the district, one in sixth grade, two and 10th, um I care about the success of our schools. I care about our educators and most importantly, I care about our students, our kids. um the past four years I've had the honor of working with the school board and to improve um our
034district. So I bring to this um 25 years as a pediatric registered nurse. Um I work in the emergency room where I've worked for the last 17 at Galisano. And I think that mostly has taught me how to stay really calm under pressure, solve problems, focus with clarity, and just I don't have any problem advocating for the well-being of children. I kind of consider myself an expert in their physical well-being. Um, not their mental health, but their physical. Um, so I'm seeking re-election because I think that we've made a lot of practical progress over the last four years and I would like to be able to see that through. Um, kind of the goals we've set and our initiatives and just be part of seeing all of that through. Um, I think my focus is
035on supporting our teachers, listening to our families in the community, and then making smart, sustainable decisions that strengthen Midlakes. So, I would appreciate your vote in re-election um on the 20th. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. And Jackie Okay. Hello. I'm Jackie Blake. Um, my face is already bright red up here. Okay. Not my cup of tea. Uh, my husband and I own and operate an outfitting business out west. And I am a stay-at-home mom of three. Uh, Barrett, who's 10, Cash 9, and Tate, who is five. Um, according to my 5-year-old, who just filled out his Mother's Day little questionnaire in school, he said that I don't do anything. So, that was reassuring. And then I'm a really bad jumper, so to work on that. Um, I'm a Midlakes 2001 graduate, and this is where
036I chose to raise my family and give back to the community. When my youngest went to school this year, I knew that I wanted to get more involved. So, I started volunteering in Cash's classroom and reading with the kids. I believe that I would be a good asset to the board. Um, I approach every decision with an open mind. And I'm not here with just one agenda. The goal that I have in mind is that for all children to thrive and be successful. Um, in conclusion, I'd like to say thank you to the entire board and staff. uh without your tireless service, the district would not be where it is today. And I know that public service is not an easy job. And that um exactly is why that I would be honored to serve
037on the board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um I just adjourned. All right. Public hearing is adjourned.