Board Presents Budget
Increase in debt services, maintenance contracts
(5/8/2008) The East Hampton School Board held a budget presentation on Tuesday night detailing some of the expenditures that account for a nearly 8-percent increase over the current school budget. The $59-million budget will bear a tax rate increase of $1.97, bringing the district’s tax rate up to $45.52 per $100 of assessed valuation.
According to Isabel Madison, the assistant superintendent for business, “We have very little room to cut if you want to provide the same kind of education” the district is accustomed to, and all but .29 percent of the increases were in areas beyond the district’s control, such as employee benefits and debt services.
At $16 million, the “undistributed” portion of the budget, up nearly 16 percent since last year, includes employee benefits and debt services for the $79-million district-wide expansion project that is now under way. After last year’s bond anticipation note, “what we’re getting ready to do now is the sale of the first bonds, which will be in multiple phases,” said Raymond Gualtieri, the district’s superintendent.
Debt services are up 56 percent since last year, to $5.5 million.
Ms. Madison said that the district will benefit from increased revenue from its sending districts. Tuition increases for the upcoming school year will mean nearly $3 million more in revenue for East Hampton over last year. Conversely, the district will be paying out about a million dollars in tuition to the Child Development Center of the Hamptons Charter School and the East Hampton Day Care Center, which houses the district’s prekindergarten program.
Ms. Madison said there would be significant increases in some areas of the operation budget to “bring up to snuff certain parts of the building that need to be taken care of.” To that end, the budget reflects increases in maintenance contracts for the high school of $331,580, which is over 2000 percent more than last year.
The 2009-10 school year will be the last year of a contract with Montauk Bus, which takes care of transportation for the kids in the district who attend private schools or Board of Cooperative Educational Services programs. After that, the district will entirely control its own transportation program.
“In order not to zigzag the budget, we’re going to be buying three additional buses this year” at a cost of $220,000, said Ms. Madison. The district will purchase three more the following year to complete the fleet.
East Hampton received a small windfall from New York State in the form of an Expanding Our Children’s Education and Learning, or EXCEL, grant of $643,163. The grant can be spent on construction or technology, and the board opted to spend the money to replace windows in the middle and elementary school buildings that might blow out in the event of a hurricane.
By law, voters must approve the use of the grant, and it will be added to the ballot on May 20. “If the taxpayers vote no, we lose the money and it goes to another school district,” said Dr. Gualtieri. Polls will be open between 2 and 9 p.m. at the high school.
The East Hampton Board of Education announced that contracts have been awarded for the middle and high school phases of the district’s construction project. Since all of the contracts came in under bid, the board voted to approve alternate projects as well.
Stalco Construction of Islandia was awarded a $9.7-million contract for general construction, and for another $396,000 they will perform asbestos abatement in nine areas of the middle school. “That doesn’t mean that when we open up a wall in the middle school we won’t find something else, but this takes care of all the known asbestos,” said Dr. Gualtieri.
A mechanical contract worth $4.6 million was awarded to JNS Heating Services of Holbrook. The bid includes alternate projects to install air-conditioning in the elementary school gymnasium and add steam to a hot water heater.
A $2.3 million electrical contract was awarded to Eldor Contracting Corporation also based in Holbrook. The company will upgrade a generator, provide electronics for a movable wall in the middle school art room, and install daylight-harvesting mechanisms in the middle school. The system will allow teachers to automatically adjust the amount of light on different sides of the classroom and keep energy costs down.
At $960,000, the plumbing contract went to Botto Mechanical Corporation of Plainview.