Trumansburg superintendent bemoans budget cuts
TRUMANSBURG — The question of how to balance educational concerns with monetary restrictions was the dominant theme at Wednesday’s Trumansburg Board of Education meeting, which featured a 2010-2011 budget hearing and brief introductions by school board candidates running for three vacant terms.
In Superintendent Paula Hurley’s opening remarks, she outlined the cuts that had been made to keep the tax levy as low as possible. These cutbacks included the loss of social studies, health and teacher aid positions, reduction of cleaning services, and reduction of building summer hours by 40 percent.
“Are we happy about it? Hurley said. “Absolutely not. Every cut we made will affect the students. But we needed to make these, we felt it was the best way to move forward while keeping a solid program for our students.”
Hurley said state aid is expected to decline in the next two school years. The reduction anticipated for next year can be offset by reserves, she said, but “in 2011-2012 we have tremendous concern about getting state aid.”
Residents asked only a few questions regarding buying new buses, repairing the school track, and how to keep tax increases minimal going forward.
“I cannot as a taxpayer continue to get increases at that rate,” said resident Ron MacLean of Lake Street.
The board originally aimed to keep the tax levy increase at about 2 percent, and a recent approved amendment to add back a music teacher position brought the levy-increase estimate to 2.9 without updated assessed value figured in, bringing the total current budget to $23,114,651.
The cost of purchasing the school buses would be $390,000. While the district allotted for the maximum cost to buy three buses, Hurley said, it may be required to purchase only two. State transportation aid offsets most of the costs, and budget literature distributed at the meeting indicates that district taxpayers pay less than 10 percent of the purchase price of new buses.
The five candidates competing for three school board positions each took a few minutes to make comments, but didn’t speak directly or specifically about the budget.