First Look at 2023-24 School Year Budget Shows Hampton Bays Coming In Under Tax Cap

While building and department budget construction is still underway, Hampton Bays School Superintendent Lars Clemensen said current projections place the district’s 2023-24 school year budget at or below the state-imposed cap on tax levy increases.

He said during the February 7 Board of Education meeting that there’s still some fine-tuning to be done, but that the operating principles and budget planning remains the same for the current calculated 2.76 percent allowable tax levy increase for a budget that’s 6.74 percent higher.

“Our goals are focusing on program offerings for students and mitigating the tax rate for the local taxpayer. We want to maintain viable programs, retain the staff we need to do that at a high level, remain under the tax cap and avoid using our reserves,” Clemensen said. “You don’t go grocery shopping with your savings account. The reserves are for emergency purposes or special needs that we have as a school district. You don’t want to live off of that. It’s not sustainable.”

Governor Kathy Hochul released her budget last week, on February 1, which helps the district really begin to crunch the numbers. The proposed budget provides an increase of $2.7 billion to fully fund foundation aid. This is the final year of the phase-in for districts who were underpaid. Hampton Bays is one of those, and received 60 percent of the monies for the 2021-22 school year, 80 percent for this current school year and will be fully funded for the 2023-24 school year. In Hampton Bays, the superintendent said, this equates to a 27 percent increase in state aid.

Clemensen said he’s been working with Assistant Superintendent for Finance & Operations Larry Luce to look over his own billing history as a community member and taxpayer to see what has changed. The school tax rate, he said, was $13 per $1,000 of assessed value for the 2015-16 school year, compared to $11.91 for this school year.

“The board of education’s commitment over the last 10 years has been to advocate for additional money from Albany and federal dollars in Washington,” Clemensen said. “Every dollar that comes from the governor’s budget, from the Legislature’s final budget to federal grants that we can secure is a dollar less that the local taxpayer has to provide for the functioning of our schools. The local share has gone down over that period of time. The costs have gone up, but we work hard to mitigate those costs while providing kids with more than the minimum requirements to graduate — electives, co-curricular offerings, services and support and special education, English as a new language, advanced placement and social-emotional health needs. We want to provide support to our taxpayers so our families who live here, stay here. We want our seniors who live here to stay here.”

Budget planning to date, the superintendent said, has included a review of current and future projected enrollment using demographic data, a look at special education placement, analysis of graduating seniors and building shifts, review of all collective bargaining agreements, update of benefit rates and pension projections, review of all Eastern Suffolk BOCES commitments to determine viability for the future, meetings with associations, ongoing budget line building by program managers and review of co-curricular, elective and athletic offerings and course programming.

Luce also said Tuesday he received, that day, the building permits for capital projects to be completed this summer. The projects are available to be bid on via the BBS Architects electronic system, and will be awarded in March.

“This summer, we’re going to be a little bit busy,” he said, laughing.

Plans at the elementary school include renovation of the life skills toilet room, retrofitting eight or more classrooms with air conditioning and adding an outdoor learning center.

Air conditioning will also be added to eight or more classrooms at the high school. The high school track will be resurfaced, the varsity baseball and softball fields will be rebuilt with turf infields and an outdoor learning space will be constructed within the library courtyard.