001Okay, we're going to call the public hearing. This is May 66. It's our public on our budget. So, I'll let Diane begin. Who's in charge of the PowerPoint? >> I can't see the screen though. So, if something happens up there, somebody please tell me. >> And I wouldn't see the Can anybody see the screen? That is always the question, right? We turn it just a little bit. I was thinking, would you like me to go sit all the way? Okay. Okay. You heard this speech. Hey, I've really changed it up for my last one, just so you know. Uh, good evening everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. Uh, this evening's public hearing is an opportunity to walk through our budget, explain how the budget was developed, and answer any questions that you might have.
002Before we begin, I want to take a moment to recognize and thank Nikki Spear, our school business executive, for the tremendous amount of work that has gone into this budget. We'll talk about that. This is budget season, but a good budget is a yearround process and I really appreciate the work that she does so that when we get to budget season, we have accurate numbers and accurate forecasts. I also want to thank our administrators and supervisors. Um, it's been a particularly difficult budget year and there's been a great deal of collaboration and problem solving and careful review involved with getting to this point. We've been working intentionally over the past many years to ensure that the district could withstand either the impacts of inflation or the impacts of a low revenue year. Unfortunately, this year
003we're experiencing both at the same time. Uh costs continue to rise across nearly every operational area. While revenues are remaining relatively flat. Even with those challenges, this proposed budget continues to prioritize students, educational opportunities, and long-term sustainability. These guiding principles are the lens through which every budget decision is made. As always, our goal is to provide maximum educational opportunities for students while remaining mindful of our responsibility to our taxpayers. This year, those conversations also included preparing for and supporting district reconfiguration. Reconfiguration creates both opportunities and needs. Supporting transitions for students and staff, ensuring equitable access to services, relied staffing and programming, and preparing our buildings for new grade configurations. Our decisions are based on data, not emotion or traditions alone. Program changes are driven by enrollment trends, student needs, and long-term sustainability. We continue directing
004resources towards the areas where students need the most. We're also trying to preserve opportunities wherever possible despite the significant financial pressures. One of the themes you'll hear repeatedly tonight is balancing. We're balancing educational opportunities with fiscal responsibility, balancing current needs with future sustainability, and balancing rising costs with limited revenue growth. So, I'm going to talk about our revenue for a little bit. Our total proposed budget is 39,800 39,831,000. And so, this is how it's broken down. You can see that um property taxes make up the largest chunk at nearly 65% or about 28 25.8 million. This is the portion that directly comes from all of our taxpayers. So, thank you to everybody for paying your taxes on time. Um, the next largest portion is about is the state and federal aid, which makes up about
00526% of this current budget. It's roughly 10 and a half million. And, um, our fund balance, which is higher this year to offset the lower tax levy, is making up about 7.4%. And this is reflective of our strong fiscal management over the prior years that we have that balance available to us. Um the other sources that make up the remaining one and a half% are things like interest and fees and um reimbursements. So this is our a look at our state aid based on the executive budget from January. Um that first 2526 column is where we actually ended up from 2526 and then the 2627 is where we're projecting to be in the next year. And they the executive budget assumed a 1% foundation aid increase. Um so that's what's reflecting here with a total
006of 3.21% to 1% above that last year's actual. Um, when we did our forecast for our proposed budget, we went off with the optimistic assumption that our foundation aid will end up being 2%, not 1%. So, in case this number looks a little different to you from the next few slides, that's why. Um, last year our tax levy was $25,577,281 and this year our tax cap ended up being about.75% increase over that. We came in just slightly under at 74% with a tax levy of 25,766,961 which is not even a $200,000 increase spread over all of the taxpayers. This is just a fiveyear look at where we are and where we've been. So our tax levy has grown about 3.4% 4% over the last five years, but our actual um tax rates for the average
007taxpayer, it has declined um almost five and a half%. That is so even as we are collecting more individual taxpayers are paying less per $1,000 of their assessed value due to the rising property costs uh values and our um estimated tax rate for 2627 will be $728. That's an average that will vary depending on um your location, but it is not much higher than where we were last year and it's significantly lower than where we were five years ago. Under New York state law, uh school district budgets have to be presented in with three separate components or we talk about as the three-part budget anywhere. Administrative program and capital. It's supposed to provide transparency. It's hard to take a budget that's six pages long and put it in a lovely pie chart with only three
008sec three sections and seem at all transparent. But they didn't ask my opinion, but I still gave it. So the program component of course represents the district educational program for students makes up the largest percentage of our budget. The capital component includes expenses related to facilities, maintenance, transportation, equipment and debt service. and the administrative component component includes the operational and supervisory functions necessary to run the district. The next slide breaks down the administrative component into more detail as it's often an area that's misunderstood. You see all the things that fall under each of the components. Um program is pretty self explanatory. Capital again, pretty self-explanatory, but administrative includes all those things that we need to have in order to run the districts regardless of the size of enrollment. So that includes business administration, business office,
009district staff, legal services, auditing, um curriculum supervision, OC's cost. Under this is insurance. You'll notice is listed. A good example of the inflationary pressures that we're feeling is not just us but all districts. Our insurance costs, not including our student accident insurance increase by approximately $43,000 for this school year. For next year, we anticipate we've already been we've already been given our inatory note. Uh they'll go up at least $15,000. At the same time, our deductible raised from 5,000 last year to 10,000 this year to 15,000 for next year. So, our taxes in our our cost for insurance will have gone up $58,000 and our deductible is going from $5,000 to 15,000. So, that our rate is only going up $58,000. Like there's just the cost of doing business is incredible. So these costs we
010have to absorb. They're just part of operating a school. There's not much you can do about them. One of the things that gets talked about a lot and was when we were talking about reconfiguration is administrative salaries. They are here in the supervision regular school, but they themselves increased by their contractual rate of 3%. It's all based on the contract. The increase to this component is really much more reflective of inflationary costs than staffing expansion. Whether a district has 1,200 students or 10 students, many of the things that we have to do are exactly the same. We have to have our audits. Insurance still has to be maintained. Payroll has to be processed and legal obligations still exist. So, we're not alone. I if you read anything about other districts, they're having the same conversation
011about the financial pressures on the cost of doing business every day. This breaks our budget down into a better understanding of where the money actually goes than the three component slide does. The overall budget increase this year is 4.54%. Even though the proposed tax levy increase remains under 1%. The largest expenditure continues to be salaries and benefits and this is not atypical of a school district. This our our cost is in people because people work with students. Um approximately threearters of our budget is tied directly to staffing and the benefits associated with that. As we've talked about at length, one of the most significant challenges this year is the increase in the cost of health care. Health insurance costs increased by 22%. While our workers compensation costs increased by a lot less at 19%. So
012again, we're seeing some real inflationary pressures on our benefits. There are staffing reductions in next year's budget. Importantly, all but one of those reductions is able to occur through positions being vacated rather than active reductions of current staff. We do have one staff member who uh is going to go on the preferred eligibility list because of the redundancy in her position um with the reconfiguration. We're also seeing substantial increases in contractual expenses and you'll see that under contractual including fuels um open their electric bill were no different. So the service contracts uh operational services fuels um those are uh all increasing pretty substantially. We did try to reduce materials and supplies wherever possible without compromising programming. So, the budget presented tonight reflects a great deal of careful review. The goal is not simply to reduce
013spending, but to prioritize spending in ways that continue supporting students while maintaining the district's long-term stability. I do not see our budget concerns as a single year event. What we're dealing with this year, uh, the district will be dealing with for the next few years. So we can't just fix it for this year and hope for the best for next year. We need to keep planning for fiscal stability for the next few years. So to help us with fiscal stability, um we have our reserve funds. The state says that uh school district can only have 4% of their unassigned fund balance or 4% of their budget is their unassigned fund balance that they can keep. Um and so reserve funds are an important part of maintaining the district's fiscal health over time. They allow districts
014to plan responsibly for large future expenses and then help stabilize impact on taxpayers. Um, they help us avoid unnecessary borrowing, maintain more stable tax levies, respond to emergencies, and prepare for predictable long-term costs. This year, um, this proposed year, we'll use we're planning to use the reserve funds for the purchase of buses without borrowing and for space upgrades for our district and business office need um, that's associated with the reconfiguration. And looking ahead, these reserves may also help us with the electric bus mandate that's coming. Um, whenever that arrives, we'll be prepared. And having although our reserve, we always get slap on hand to be over 4%. We are not atypical as being said of other districts, it's not feasible. But because of that, we are able to um balance our immediate needs while protecting
015our district's future at the same time. And this is just a look at our 10-year history of the fund balance and how it has grown. Um this year, as was mentioned, we'd be using about 2.9 million of the NSIN fund balance to offset the 20161 tax levy. um and that includes the um bus transportation piece. So, talking about the upcoming budget vote, it's on Tuesday, May 19th, just since it's a really you forgot. It's located uh you can vote right at door 5. from the hours of 8 am to 8:00 pm. If you are doing an absentee ballot, it must be received by the district clerk, which is Gina, no later than 5:00 p.m. on voting day, May 19th. This year we have on the ballot the request for our school budget of 39,831,000 to
016be approved as well as our um transportation bus proposition to use up to $360,000 for the purchase of two buses and any related incidentals like installing radios or panels and everything like that. And the next proposition is the library tax levy. Just as a reminder, these funds are collected by the school district on behalf of the library. They're not related to the district in any way, shape, or form. They just paid to us and then we pay it back out to the library and money out. Also, we have two board seats that will be available. Um Joe Henderson and Mike Martin term their terms are expiring at the end of this year. They're both running again as well as Scott Gibson. There is the opportunity for two writings but you must fill in two names
017if you any more than that. None of them will be counted. and just probably knows, but you can vote a citizen of the United States to be 18 and older, but you must be registered. And if you want any more of our budget information, it is on our district website. You go to our district, click on departments, select budget, and then everything is on there. This presentation will be there. question >> options for shopping around for insurance. >> There aren't a lot of options. Uh there are two main carriers for school districts and so we use the the local we I want to say this right. So correct me. I'm not insulted if you correct me. So, we use a local insurance company because we like to be able to call Carolyn and she knows
018us and she stops over, but they simply are the the local representative for a large school specializes in school district. So, I don't know that we've actually looked at the other um I think that she shops a little bit for us before coming back with the best quote. >> But that is a good question. Well, we we do try to stick to local because we have a lot of unique things that happen here. It's nice to have somebody who knows us. >> The health insurance is a whole different deal than the schools. >> Yeah. >> Oh, >> yeah. Yeah. That's what I was talking about was the school. The school insurance. >> No, there's no option to shop around for that right now. We're part of a consortium and um we're not self-funded. We're self-pay.
019And so the consortium is made up of 14 or 15 different school districts and everyone pays in and then that fund is what pays for our insurance and really that's how most districts are do it. They're all part of consortiums. We the consortium has done everything to possibly reduce payments and keep cost from rising but it just is really hard to see. I might remembering this incorrectly but in the past hadn't we gone up to the 2% tax rate because I thought the logic was if you don't do that you're costing yourself money in the future. So if that's the case, why are we shortch changing one and two 5% on this budget? >> So it says 2% but the state has a calculation where you enter in all of your debt service and um
020various other expenses and information from the previous year and they calculate it. So it's a 2% but adjusted based on the information you put in. So this year we are capped at 75. So if we wanted to go 1% we would have to have a super consider going over. >> Anyone else? Okay, we're going to journ the uh hearing at this time. We're going to call to order uh the main board of education meeting for Wednesday, May 6. >> We got to wait. Sorry. >> We got to wait. >> Yes.