The Bridgehampton School District last week unveiled a rough draft of next year's school budget. Having been heavily affected by the pandemic, the district now has a lot of homework to do, school officials said.
"There's a lot of mandates and expenses that the district can't control. . . . This year we can add the Covid-19 increases, which have hit us very hard," said Jennifer Coggin, the business administrator, at the Jan. 27 school board meeting. "It depleted our budget this year. We have been challenged to find money wherever we can."
She offered two financial pictures, both of which would mean Bridgehampton's budget would top $20 million for the first time, and both of which would mean the district attempts to override the state-imposed limit on tax levy increases -- though that is not a foregone conclusion at this point.
In what she called a "non-Covid budget," Ms. Coggin explained, there would be fewer increases than in a "Covid budget," but increases nonetheless. Staff members are due pay raises and there are additional costs associated with transportation and special education for students with disabilities. The total would be $20,594,098, or a 9.01 percent increase over the current year's $18.98 million spending plan. It would come out to $1.27 million over what the state's tax levy limits allow.
In the Covid budget, Ms. Coggin said, the district would still need almost everything that the non-Covid budget includes, plus more money for cleaning staff, health services, personal protective equipment and other supplies, and health insurance for additional employees who would have to be hired or retained from the current year. It totaled $21,196,144, or a 12.39 percent increase over the current year. That's $1.87 million over the tax cap.
In either scenario, Bridgehampton would spend $40,000 to repay what it borrowed from one of its own reserve accounts for Covid-related costs early on. Ms. Coggin said the district needs to hire someone to maintain the new geothermal heating and cooling system that was recently installed. It also anticipates replacing a 15-year-old utility truck at a cost of $40,000. Salary increases for employees, which are laid out in contracts with the teachers and other staff, would amount to approximately $300,000.
"These are preliminary numbers," Ms. Coggin said. "They are definitely likely to change because we are still waiting on a lot of things." Notable among those anticipated changes, she said, is the final word from New York State on how much money it will give the school. Another unknown is whether the district can apply early for the partial reimbursement it is slated to receive from the state upon completion of the major construction project now in progress.
The state tax cap limit is the lowest it has been in five years, at 1.23 percent. Bridgehampton's tax base growth factor, which is a unique number each school district is assigned based on real estate development and other year-to-year fluctuations, is just over 1 percent. Bridgehampton will lose out on tax revenue because it recently finished paying off a bond, which influences a district's tax levy calculations. Combined, these numbers mean the district can increase its tax levy by only $316,555 without needing a supermajority of voter approval in May -- far beneath what the early budget proposals outline.
Bridgehampton voters supported cap-busting budgets in the 2014-15 and 2016-17 school years.
Ms. Coggin said she will continue to "refine" the budget with the help of the budget advisory committee, which is to meet on Wednesday. "I will need to know by the February board meeting if we are piercing the tax cap or not," she told board members last week. That meeting is on Feb. 24 at 6 p.m.
Supe Won't Return
In other Bridgehampton School news, Ron White, the school board president, announced that the district will not renew its contract with Robert Hauser, the superintendent, which is set to expire on June 30. Mr. Hauser has been in that role since February of 2018 and was previously the business administrator for seven years.
The district and Mr. Hauser "mutually agreed not to seek a contract extension," Mr. White said in a prepared statement last week. The board plans to conduct a formal superintendent search, which it did not do before the previous superintendent retired in 2018.