Blind Brook Proposes Nearly $40 Million School Budget

The Blind Brook-Rye Union Free School District presented its proposed $39.5 million budget Monday, which could impose a slightly more than 2 percent tax levy on residents within the district, a move that elicited a mixed reception from those who attended the meeting.

Superintendent William Stark presented the budget to an audience filled with parents and residents concerned about higher taxes.

The district's proposed 2010-2011 budget is about 1.6 percent higher than the previous year's $37.2 million budget.

Stark said declining property values, sales tax revenues and possible cuts in state aid necessitated the proposed 2.14 percent tax  levy increase. He said that 86 percent of the district's revenue is generated from property taxes, but that assessments had declined 2.8 percent for properties within the district from 2008 to 2009, which totals a loss of $64 million in assessed value. 

"The assessment value in this community declined," Stark said. "When the assessment value declines, the rate—even to get to the exact same tax—has to go up."

The district's proposed budget includes the elimination of nine staff positions, including the director of curriculum/instruction, one special education teacher, one kindergarten through twelfth grade psychologist and several other positions. It also includes two proposed staffing additions of a third grade teacher and a K-5 science coordinator.

One of the most argued items in the proposed budget was the elimination of merged sports programs, such as hockey and swimming. Several parents spoke at the meeting, urging the Board of Education to reconsider its proposal.

Steve Ketchabaw, whose son, Tyler, is the captain of the Rye Town/Harrison Titans ice hockey team, asked the board not to cut the hockey program because it would affect 67 children from middle school to high school who participate in the sport. He said parents would gladly contribute.

"We're not trying to take a dime away from any other program. Give us the opportunity to raise money," Ketchabaw said. 

David Nadasi, whose son, Paul, a senior who played his final hockey game oft the season Sunday night, said, unlike sports such as baseball or soccer, the ice hockey program did not have massive playing fields built in the last several years.  

"If the money spent on those facilities would've been spent on an ice hockey rink, the costs of the hockey program would be significantly reduced compared to those other sports," Nadasi said. 

While many parents pleaded with the board to avoid cuts to merged sports, other residents weren't too happy with the proposed tax levy.

Rye Brook resident Lina Accurso said her more than $10,000 tax bill was already too high. Accurso said she was in danger of losing the house she has lived in for 46 years, which her father built. 

"You're eating into my life savings," she said. 

Other residents who spoke at the meeting asked the board if any teachers were willing to agree to pay cuts or salary freezes, an action recently taken by a teachers' union in Scarsdale.

Starks said no teachers, as of yet, had agreed to similar concessions. When an audience member directly asked Stark if we could take a pay cut, Stark replied that he would not and did not feel inclined to discuss his salary in a public forum.

Dick Hubert, a frequent critic of the Board of Education, said he didn't find it surprising that Blind Brook was unlikely to follow Scarsdale's actions.

"Is that something we can expect here? Clearly not yet," he said. "There's something in the water in this school district? "It seems to be a case of we want ours and to hell with anybody else."

Hubert, a retiree, said other retired people and older residents who live on a fixed income cannot afford year-over-year increases in taxes, and that with declining home values the school district could no longer justify increasing the tax levy.

"The old argument used to be that Blind Brook schools kept the values of homes up," Hubert said. "That argument is dead in the water."

The meeting showed some division between parents whose children attend school in the district and older residents who feel that the cost of educating these children has become much too high.

Laurie Weinberg, one of those parents, said the tax levy was a modest increase and that residents who don't have children in the district should make the same sacrifice that previous generations made.

"At one point there were older people paying for your children when they didn't have kids in the school district, so that's just kind of how the life cycle goes," she said.

Paul Snisky, a Rye Brook resident and Blind Brook parent, agreed.

"If you need to raise my taxes to keep the school district at the level that it is, then go ahead and raise my taxes," he said. 

Blind Brook will hold a budget workshop on Saturday, March, 6. It will hold three other public meetings throughout March and April before adopting its 2010-11 budget on April 19.