Better late than never.
The Manhasset School District voters came through this month giving their resounding approval to the district’s revised $86 million budget for the 2013-14 school year.
That vote of 72 percent in favor exceeded the 60 percent supermajority required for the revised budget, which had a tax levy increase of 1.97 percent.
Although most districts on Long Island were allowed a 3 percent increase in the tax levy under the state-mandated tax cap, Manhasset’s was lower due to the refinancing of $1.4 million in district debt that began prior to the implementation of New York state’s tax levy cap legislation in 2011.
In May only 53.3 percent of voters, short of the 60-percent supermajority needed, were in favor of the district’s $89 million budget. The revised budget is $86 million.
Manhasset Superintendent of School Charles Cardillo’s back was to the wall.
If the second budget vote did not pass, the board of education would have been forced to cut all extracurricular programs and athletics throughout the district in addition to cutting more teachers from both the elementary and secondary levels, to reach an additional $1.5 million in reductions to achieve a contingent budget commonly referred to as “austerity.”
Cardillo was banking on the belief that in the first vote many of the voters in the district took the passage of the budget for granted.
The anti-tax opposition was well organized and even then it only captured 46.7 percent of the vote. In the second go-round the opposition had a mere 28 percent of the vote. If 60 percent is a supermajority, 28 percent is a meaningless minority.
It was a very difficult month for Cardillo. The publicity after the failed first vote “created a tremendous amount of positive energy that would ensure our students would be the beneficiaries of a strong academic program and strong programs in arts, music, drama and interscholastic athletics and to provide meaningful opportunities,” he said.
“I am disappointed that the first vote failed, where we can’t provide comparable programs to our students that we offered this year and had the meaningful staff reductions, but the passing of the second vote allowed us to minimize staff reductions and retain high-quality teachers and staff.”
A successful school district was nearly gutted. But there is a larger issue here.
Under pressure from the Tea Party and other conservatives, the state Legislature passed a law that blindly ties the hands of superintendents and school boards setting an arbitrary number for school tax increases without taking into consideration the unique challenges that a given district faces.
We are happy for Cardillo, the teachers and, most of all, the children in the Manhasset School District, but we are concerned about what can happen in New York when a noisy minority is well organized.
