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Board preview: budget adds security staff, facility work and proposes 0.75% levy increase
Summary
Assistant superintendent and finance staff laid out the board's 2025'26 budget overview, highlighting added SROs and monitors, air-conditioning planning, a reduction in leased large buses from 12 to 6, new PILOT revenue of about $151,000, and a proposed 3.9% budget increase with a 0.75% proposed tax levy change.
At a March 11 board meeting the district's assistant superintendent for business presented the board's working budget for 2025'26 and highlighted safety, transportation and facilities priorities.
The assistant superintendent said the draft budget would increase overall spending by 3.9% and that, "the taxes are going up point 75%" under the current proposal. He described a series of staffing additions and capital priorities intended to address safety and day-to-day operations: an increase in school-resource officers (one added at the high school and one at the middle school), additional bus monitors, 5 more hallway and bathroom monitors, an assistant principal and an office assistant at the middle school, and an assistant athletic director listed district-wide (noted as a $110,000 line in the presentation).
Transportation changes include reducing the planned replacement of large buses from 12 to 6 leased units while maintaining seven small buses. The presentation also flagged facility investments and contingencies for air conditioning tied to a state guidance point (classrooms reaching 88 degrees), and potential bleacher repairs to be pursued as a state-approved capital project. On revenue, the presentation cited a new payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) for a development called the Hamlet at Carmel on Stony Avenue estimated to yield the district about $151,000 in year one (with a 2% annual increase for 30 years).
The finance presenter also discussed projected savings from moving copier services to BOCES, changes to the retirement-incentive assumptions (reduced target retirements), and a projected fund-balance improvement that the presenter said could allow flexibility in the levy. Trustees asked for clarifications on substitute staffing costs, whether positions previously authorized were actually filled, and how enrollment changes interact with state foundation aid; finance staff explained that foundation aid is under "hold harmless" protections for the coming year and that enrollment changes would not reduce foundation aid for the 2025'26 cycle.
What happens next: the superintendent's recommended budget will be released at the next meeting; the board announced a public budget advisory meeting for March 22 and will present a revised budget with an end-of-year fund-balance column on March 25.
