001Mhm. >> Live? Okay. Uh good evening and welcome to the board budget hearing. Uh we're going to turn it over to uh Mrs. Casale and Mr. Dornicheck to do the uh budget hearing presentation. >> Okay, thank you. All right, so this is the official budget hearing that we have every year, legally required. So, do I want my clicker? Yeah. So, we start the budget process all throughout the year, and the main goal, of course, the budget has to align with the Board of Education goals. So, we'll just go over them very quickly. The board does adopt these goals. They haven't changed from last year, but the budget aligns to these goals. So, student achievement, and that's really to increase student learning. I'm not going to read the full bullet. Safety and security, to have a
002safe and healthy environment throughout the school. So, you'll hear about some of those things in the budget. Fiscal responsibility and accountability, so to ensure fiscal responsibility um and to be transparent, and which this budget does. Communication is a goal to build a connected learning community where the whole community is involved. We do have a lot of meetings about that and spend a lot of time, a lot of applications on that. And the last Board of Ed goal is to continually um they're to review policies, cuz the Board of Education is in charge of all the policies that govern the school district. So, that's where we start. So, the board of uh the budget that the board adopted this year, the 2026-2027 budget, we're going to look at it in a few different ways. The first
003way we look at it is by major functional areas. So, when we look at the first group, we're looking at all the general support. So, that's everything from the Board of Education to the business office, legal fees, anything that you can think of that's administration. Not the Not the building principals and things like that. Um safety and security, buildings and grounds, so your utilities, everything in there. So, this budget category did go up by 2.1%. But, the major increase security budget alone went up by $200,000. So, when you look at the total increase of $224,000, $200,000 of that is for our building security. The next group is really, you know, the meat of the budget, instruction. So, that's everything from your building principals, your aides, your teachers, your books, your, you know, uh your BOCES
004students, technology, everything that's instruction is part of the 2000 to 2800. And the overall increase was 1.8%. I mean, we did have a lot of it's based on student needs, um you know, the instructional needs and all our contracts. The other major functional area is pupil transportation. So, obviously, we have to have transportation for our students, and we do contract out all our transportation. And the increase in the budget on that is like a big number, 4 and 1/2%. It's basically the CPI, the consumer price index, cuz we have the same contract we rolled over. And um additional aides that we need for student with disabilities and private bussing has gone up as well. The last category, and these are state functions, which is why we're they're in these categories, cuz they're New York State
005functions. Under is called undistributed expense and that's for all our insurance, our health insurance, our employee benefits, social security, retirement expenses, and our transfers to special education and to um capital budget. So, our capital initiatives did increa- did increase by $2.5 million, which is the major piece of that. And we saw a double-digit increases in health insurance from the NYSHIP plan. So, you know, that's the expenditure budget and that is what you are voting on on proposition one. You don't vote on the revenue budget. You're voting just on this expenditure budget for $122 million. So, another way to just look at that same $122 million is just based on the objects and sometimes this is easier to understand because 48% of our budget is in personnel, which it should be, right? Cuz we're all about
006students and we're all about people. And we have each week over every other week 650 paychecks for all our teachers and staff and everybody who's here. Um so, personnel being 48% and then the employee benefits being 22% of those. So, you're looking right there of that's what we really have worked to control. We have contracts with all our employees. You know, and we work very diligently on those because we have a little They are the major piece of our budget. The other big component you see in gray is um BOCES um Well, that was in gray in that one. So, that's BOCES and that's really for our student with students with disabilities, ARC Ed. We pay administrative fees. We have a wonderful enrichment program that's BOCES. So, that's that 12% of our budget. On the
007contractual side, that 6% again, another decent size of our budget. That's really utilities, legal, um anything that's, you know, our copy machines, things like that. That are insurance for our district now, not our health insurance. Then we have transportation, which we just talked about as 5%. Debt service is 3%, kind of small, so that's where we really have very low debt in this district, and it's only 3% of our budget. Um interfund transfers is that transfer to cover our capital expenses and cover our students with disabilities that go to summer programs. Supplies is very little of our budget. It's 1% It's less than 1%. So, the little piece of things that are so important to the buildings make up 1%. We spend a lot of time on accounts payable, a lot of rules governing that
008little 1%. And if you looked at equipment, it doesn't even add up to a percent of the budget. So, that's how you would break the $122 million down to different objects of expense. The last piece is what we're really required to show you is the component budget comparison. So, there's rules for New York State based on that we have to show you how much of your budget you're spending on program. And when you're talking about program, you're talking about anything that's really about the students. So, now, transportation, the buildings, the employee benefits that go with those teachers that are directly in the classroom. So, overall, from year to year, you compare the two years. And this year it's 77, last year it was 79. But because it's a pie, right, and capital has gone from
00912.9 to 11.3, that is really why program looks like it got smaller. But in overall dollars, it's the same. And administration is 9.7 to 9.7. And like under 12 is kind of considered like, okay, so we're low on the administration side in Comsewogue. That would be everything from the superintendent to the building principals, everything in administration is covered there cuz now you're talking just admin. >> Okay. >> Now going to have >> Okay. So, now the other portion of of the presentation is about the the the revenue end of the budget. So, uh Ms. Casale mentioned earlier that, you know, what you're voting on is the expenditure budget. There's also the revenue side of the budget as well for us on the budgeting side of things. So, we'll just review some of the changes there
010between last year and this year. Um the first one and and the biggest one is obviously our state aid. Um you'll see in in in this graphic up here that, you know, we are we are expecting an increase in state aid between last year and this year. Um you know, roughly 5% of a change between the two, monetary value a little over two two million, a little under two and a half million. Um and as a part of that, we noted in there that we are we haven't actually gotten this number in from the state yet, so we don't know exactly what it's going to be. It's an estimate. But within that number, we are estimating, um you know, hopefully an additional 568 uh 568,000 coming in from >> Just really quick. So, they were
011supposed to adopt a budget on April 1st. It's now May 6th, and they still haven't adopted a budget. New York State hasn't. So, we're just going on what we assume we're going to get. It could be more. >> It could be more. Could be less. >> Could be less, but the state still hasn't fulfilled their obligation to pass a budget by April 1st. >> Exactly. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. Yep. Um as the the second line as we go through is the the fund balance um and reserves. So, this is, you know, the portion of the budget that we are funding with reserves from previous years. Um you will see between last year and this year there is an increase in that area. So, we are funding um roughly 1.4 million more um in
012this year's budget uh out of out of reserves, out of the fund balance. Um interest is the next one. Um you know, again between '25, '26 to '26, '27 we are actually expecting increase in our interest revenue uh by way of roughly $200,000. Um rental, you know, those are various rentals. We have a few buildings within the district that we we gain some revenue on. Um pretty much a steady rate there. We're not expecting any increase or decrease in our rentals uh for for revenue for next year. Tuition charges, um you know, these are some students that we might contract with other districts for who come in here, you know, for whatever reason, maybe special ed services or things like that. We are actually expecting a slight decrease um in that for the upcoming school
013year. Again, a lot of it is a lot of these schools that we were previously contracting with used to um not have a lot of the programs that they're now creating within their own schools. Um so, some of those students are returning to their own district. Um the extended day and summer program as we spoke to, we are expecting a little bit of an increase in that area as well by way of about 50,000. Um and then the final one there is the just miscellaneous. So, this is, you know, different rates and refunds from BOCES and charges and things like that. We are actually expecting a a pretty substantial increase in that area for next year's budget, roughly 32% increase there. >> Yeah, the other big one, too, besides that is the PILOTs, the payments
014in lieu of the taxes. They're coming more and more on our roll, and this is where they're budgeting in in the miscellaneous. So, that's kind of guaranteed. >> Um so, that that gives us our total revenue before taxes at about 56 million. Um and, you know, to to fill that gap to get to that 122 million uh 134,093 expenditure budget that we put forward, we would need to uh raise a tax levy of of 66 million 105,473. Um and that number is exactly at the the 2% tax levy that that's allowable. >> Perfect. And the average homeowner is $168 per year is the estimated cost on that with an assessed value of 2850, which is the average in Comstock. >> Um this this next slide is just showing our our capital plan for next year.
015So, again, these are um within that general fund budget we mentioned there's transfers to capital. You know, that is that is a those are the things that we're going to do within the school itself to to improve the learning environment for our students, right? So, uh included within that general fund budget, we have the project of less than 100,000, um an abatement and and uh renovation of the second floor here and in district office in Norwood. Um and then for our larger projects, you know, we broke it down by building. So, over at Clinton, um you know, we're going to be replacing certain things that are maybe not necessarily um you know, need some updating. So, things like the electrical panel, um some fuel tank covers, our sanitation system, gas leak detection, and upgrading the
016plumbing in the bathrooms. Those are all planned for for Clinton this year. Um in Norwood, uh changing out the tile, the improving the drainage sanitation systems, replacing some of the stair stair rails, uh again gas leak detection, and uh updating some of the air conditioning systems in there. Um with Terryville, we're looking at abating some rooms and replacing some flooring. And then in JFK, we're we're continuing to just update the sanitation and drain system as well as abating some areas in there as well. So, really just continuing to improve and make sure the the classrooms and learning environments are safe for for all of our students. >> You won't be able to get them all done in this fiscal year, but we'll fund them. They may fall over to next year cuz we have to
017get state approval. So, some of these will be able to get done over the summer cuz we're hoping for some quick approvals, but a lot of them will fall over to next year. Next summer. >> And then this last one is really just the the you know, within our proposed budget, you know, these are some of the things we're able to do. Obviously, the the expenditure budget is is right at that 2% cap. Um you know, so the tax levy's right at that 2% cap. Um within that budget, we're able to raise about $3 million for capital projects. Uh we'll be able to increase the use of reserves for for this upcoming year. Uh we keep our learned our long-term plan 5-year plan in balance. Uh it's a very student-centered budget, so you know, it
018continues to maintain high-quality teaching and learning with our SEL programs, our special education programs, um all of the improvements that came from the 9-period day, our AAS programs, all of those things that really have an impact on students we're able to keep in place with this. The same school structure as we currently have, you know, very reasonable class sizes, um and all the athletic teams that we currently have we're planning on keeping in place for next year. So, those are the things that we have within the budget. Um you know, if it did end up going to a contingency budget, you know, certain things obviously we wouldn't be able to do, so the tax levy would go to zero. Certainly, we wouldn't be able to have, you know, the class size where it is. We
019would see a reduction in teachers. Uh we wouldn't be able to do any transfer to capital. So, all of those building improvements uh would be on hold at that point. Um we wouldn't be able to allow any outside facilities to use our buildings. Um and you know, no no contingency expenditures are are permitted. You could definitely see, you know, things that we've added in the last few years, some of the athletic teams and and programs to special ed and and social emotional learning could could certainly be jeopardized in uh in a contingency budget. >> But, we're confident we won't be there. So, we won't have to discuss it, right? >> And then the the budget book highlights, they're they're available in all six schools and at the library and on the district uh website. Uh
020in the budget book, you could see the line-by-line breakup of of the projected budget for next year, as well as our school report cards, all our financial data, and copies of all the disclosures that are required. So, those are all available. >> And lastly, if there's any questions, now you could call Tim Donahue, as well, myself, or Dr. Quinn, and remember to vote on Tuesday, May 19th. And that's the end of the budget hearing. >> Thank you. >> Any questions? >> Um I have a question. >> Yes. >> Will you be able to um put that in the uh board docs or presentation or is it on the site? >> Absolutely. It's on the website already, and it will be attached to the agenda this >> For the workshop >> Yep, the workshop agenda. Yep.
021>> All righty. Okay, so we can close the >> Mhm.