The Sag Harbor School District’s latest draft budget predicts a nearly 10-percent increase in the general fund for the 2010-11 school year.
As of Monday night, the district’s preliminary budget for next year stood at $32.6 million, according to Janet Verneuille, director of business operations. The budget adopted last spring for the current school year totaled $29.6 million. The approximate projected increase in the tax levy is nearly 17 percent, district officials said.
Salaries and benefits are among the largest line item increases and administrators attributed the proposed spending hike to underbudgeting in recent years.
The figures also reflect a decrease in anticipated revenue—by approximately $1.8 million, or 3.8 percent. The district is expecting to get no federal aid, whereas last year it received $529,037.
The district has until March 22 to finalize its figures.
Sag Harbor administrators have composed a list of 65 cost savings ideas, ranked in order of their effect on the student body, from adjusting school start times in order to save money by utilizing fewer buses to eliminating extracurricular clubs that have not met recently. If all 65 items are cut from the budget, the percent increase would drop from 9.96 percent to 6.81 percent.
“I don’t think anyone will care if we don’t have the newest vacuum cleaners,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Gratto said about wanting to save in areas that will affect students the least.
The School Board called a special meeting for Monday, March 15, to further discuss the budget.
Also, last Monday, the district decided to postpone for further review a bond proposal based on suggestions from the Long-Range Planning Committee that would have reconfigured the parking spaces around the school. The district noted that voters had previously been against the bond because they thought of it as a parking proposal. The district wants to package it more as a “health and safety” proposal.
Colleen Reynolds on Mar 10, 2010