Examine $37 Million Budget

Sag Harbor School District officials on Monday broke down a $37.4 million draft of the proposed 2015-16 district budget, which would keep an increase in spending within the tax levy limitations.

The $37.4 million budget would carry a 1.53-percent year-over-year increase, up nearly $565,000 from the 2014-15 budget. If the voters approve the budget, the tax levy would increase by about 2.65 percent. This year, Sag Harbor’s maximum allowed increase is approximately 2.68 percent.

The largest increase falls under the instruction budget line, which will jump 3.14 percent based largely on increases in employee salaries, the launch of an in-house special education program, the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme, and more resources for the in-house prekindergarten program. The transportation increase is driven by a 7.38-percent rise in projected costs, which would allow the district to purchase what administrators called a much-needed spare bus for about $102,000. The district also plans to install a ventless cooktop and oven in the kitchen at the high school at a cost of $150,000.

All in all, this draft of the school budget calls for a 2.5-percent increase in the school tax rate. For a home assessed at $500,000, taxes would go up about $65 for the year; for a home valued at $1 million, they would rise by about $130.

The Sag Harbor administration is proposing reductions in its community services budget line, although Jennifer Buscemi, the district’s business administrator, said community programs and services would not change much. The district would also see a small decrease in the amount spent on employee benefits, which is mostly due to a decrease in its mandatory contribution to New York’s statewide teacher retirement system.

Another proposed project is dependent upon voter approval: Replacing what administrators described as the increasingly troublesome boilers at the elementary school, which would cost $513,600. This could be funded through reserves, but to do so would require a separate vote by the school board and then by the community at large. It would not then cost taxpayers more money. The project would appear as a proposition on the ballot in May.

A third proposition under development would ask the voters to approve the creation of a new reserve fund specifically for urgent repairs. Ms. Buscemi said this is partly motivated by the chronic problems the district experienced with the elementary school’s boilers this year, for which repairs have cost at least $10,000.

“You could tap into this reserve without voter approval for any sort of emergency repairs,” Ms. Buscemi said.

Superintendent Katy Graves cautioned against relying on reserve funds — the district has about $8 million in reserves altogether — but said she believes it is acceptable in this case because the district is already paying off a pair of bonds that voters approved in November of 2013.

“We have to proceed cautiously,” Ms. Graves said.

Ms. Buscemi explained that this year’s budget proposal was built from scratch.

“We pretty much built the budget from the bottom up,” she said. “It’s really a zero-base budgeting process where we did start at zero. . . . We reviewed and studied where we could scale back, and where we could compress and where we could make reductions.”

Ms. Buscemi said the draft budget will likely undergo at least one more revision before the board has to vote on its adoption. What complicates the situation is the State Legislature has yet to finalize the amount of money the state will give to school districts. State aid may be tied to what is emerging as a controversial plan by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to couple increased school aid with education reform. Among the proposed changes would be the requirement that schools adopt a system in which teacher evaluations would be based more heavily on student test scores.

“If those reforms are passed, the governor will support a significant funding increase,” Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s communications director, said in a statement on Monday.

The Sag Harbor School Board will next meet on April 14, postponed by one day from its original date due to a regional meeting that will explore shared services between various public entities on the East End.