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Schools

Lakeland Schools Maintain Programs, Jobs, Cap Limits

School board members adopt the $160 million budget, including a 4.6 percent tax-rate rise in Cortlandt.

Urging voters to follow their lead, Lakeland school trustees approved a $160 million spending plan Thursday that keeps school programs and people largely in place.

Dr. George Stone’s budget "maintains programs, staffing and, at the same time, also improves instructional services to our schools," the school superintendent said in presenting his proposed 2013-2014 allocations.

Spending, up from some $157 million, rises just under 2 percent, paid for by a tax-cap-compliant jump in the property tax levy of almost 3 percent. Tax rates—the figure that determines the size of individual tax bills—vary widely in the six towns making up the Lakeland Central School District, reflecting differences in local equalization-and-assessment practices.

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Cortlandt—hometown of most of the school board’s nine members—leads all towns in the size of its rate increase, a 4.6 percent hike compared with Somers’ 1.4 percent and Yorktown’s 1.3 percent.

Pressed by some board members to explain Cortlandt’s outsized rise, Assistant Superintendent for Business Raymond Morningstar said district officials were closing in on the answer to that question.

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In the remaining towns, Putnam Valley can expect a 4-percent increase; Philipstown, 2.5-percent; and Carmel, 0.9-percent. 

While clearly pleased to have averted layoffs and other cutbacks, the school superintendent assailed “New York Finance 101,” his derisive identification of such fiscal hurdles as the tax cap and especially unfunded mandates.

"We cannot emphasize enough just how devastating unfunded mandates are becoming,“ Stone said of these obligations Albany imposes on the district without paying for them.

At the same time, the state restricts the amount by which Lakeland may increase its annual districtwide levy, the total cash to be raised through property taxes.

Nominally called a 2-percent cap, the real-world number is calculated annually for each district by the state comptroller’s office. Lakeland was limited to an increase in 2013-2014 of 3.01 percent, Stone said. Any increase higher than 3.01 would require an affirmative vote of 60 percent instead of a simple majority.

Stone's proposed budget, $160,364,916, increases spending by $3,129,401, or 1.99 percent. In turn, the levy rises by 2.93 percent, to $111,361,730. 

The district, which went into the budget-making process facing a $5.5 million deficit, Stone said, achieved those final figures without reducing programs, increasing class sizes or laying off employees, hugely aided by attrition and retirement incentives snapped up by 25 employees.

The acceptance of retirement incentives byLakeland Central School District staff members have helped the district close a $1.46 million deficit in the 2013-2014 school budget.

No one from the public spoke Thursday—indeed, only one resident attended the budget adoption—and the next opportunity occurs April 18 when the board meets at Lakeland Copper Beech Middle School. After that, the board will hold a public hearing on the budget on May 7 in the Administration Building, two weeks before the public votes.

Residents will go to the polls on May 21 at Van Cortlandtville Elementary School. Board members Thursday urged voter approval.

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