PLATTSBURGH — With its state-aid increase projected at zero percent, Plattsburgh City School District officially joins the ranks of districts predicting a bumpy ride through budget season.
At a recent School Board meeting, Associate Superintendent of Plattsburgh City Schools Jay Lebrun presented board members with a daunting, albeit extremely preliminary, prediction of the district's impending financial landscape.
Lebrun explained that his was "very much an assumption-laden forecast," based on Governor Andrew Cuomo's Executive Budget Proposal, which translates to no increase in state aid for the district. The forecast also takes into account what the district knows about its expenditures for next year.
"What it yields, skinny on facts though it is, is a 3.2 percent increase in the spending plan, which equates to $1.3 million.
"It may go up," Lebrun said, "or, based on some ... very difficult decisions by this board, may go down."
TAX-LEVY BURDEN
Some expenditures the district is able to project with accuracy, Lebrun said, include a 7 percent increase in employee health-care costs, an average 18.6 percent increase in employee Retirement System premium contributions, and a 12.5 percent increase in teacher Retirement System premium contributions.
But a seemingly manageable 3.2 percent increase in spending, Lebrun said, is made much less manageable by two factors: a lack of federal stimulus monies and an inability to continue to rely on fund balance and reserves.
"We know that our consumption (of fund balance and reserves), in recent years, has been excessive, and this board will have to make a decision about to what degree they continue to rely on (them)," Lebrun said.
He explained that with district funds dwindling and federal and state aid unlikely, "We have a real concentration of the burden onto the tax levy."
VOTER APPROVAL
In fact, preliminary calculations, according to Lebrun, indicate that in order to bridge the gap between revenues and expenditures next school year, the district would have to raise the tax levy 13.05 percent or reduce $2.5 million in costs.
"No one is suggesting this will be the ultimate end point," Lebrun said.
Still, Short told board members, Lebrun's forecast provides them a glimpse of the types of decisions the district may soon face.
With state law now requiring 60 percent voter approval of any public school budget with a tax-levy increase of more than 2 percent, the board will likely have to sell voters on an increased spending plan or reduce the district's non-mandated expenditures.
"You've got to remember — we cut $3 million in the last few years from that list (of non-mandated expenditures), and none of those are back," Short said.
Email Ashleigh Livingston at: alivingston@pressrepublican.com
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