The Mineola school district’s budget will likely grow $1.2 million next year despite a decrease in the tax levy mandated by the state’s tax cap law, Superintendent Michael Nagler said Thursday.
The $90,864,512 draft 2016-2017 budget Nagler presented to the Mineola school board Thursday shows a 1.34-percent increase over the current year, while the $78,843,160 tax levy is about $10,000 smaller, with the district’s tax levy cap set at -0.012 percent.
Some $6.75 million in state aid and the use of $900,000 in unallocated fund balance money — $650,000 above the district’s norm — will help offset the smaller tax levy, Nagler said, allowing the district to maintain its programs and fund some capital projects.
“This is the time to address our buildings and continue all the work we’re doing in our buildings …,” Nagler said. “It’s appropriate. It’s not driving bonding, it’s not extra money. We’re able to do all of this because we planned properly.”
As they did last month, school board members emphasized the importance of voters approving the budget with the tax levy decrease to avoid taking on a contingency budget.
That would maintain the current tax levy, but the district couldn’t spend money on equipment and would be subject to other regulations, Nagler said.
“The irony is that a failed budget costs us more than a passed budget, and we can do less because we’re hampered by the laws of the contingency,” school board Trustee Margaret Ballantyne-Mannion said.
The use of the extra fund balance money, normally unassigned to any specific expense, is “one-time spending,” Nagler said.
It will go to three specific areas: $200,000 for capital projects, $330,000 for facilities upgrades and $120,000 for equipment, he said.
District officials already plan to shrink those lines by the same amounts in the 2017-2018 budget.
“We have ways of accounting,” Nagler said. “We’re going to spend this money and we’ll see what we can spend it on, but it’s find to do this and still be okay moving forward.”
The larger budget funds a few high-priority capital projects in the district’s five-year capital plan Nagler presented earlier this month.
The $200,000 in additional capital money to install air conditioning in Jackson Avenue School’s classrooms, add a district storage facility and build three new music classrooms at Mineola High School, Nagler said.
The $830,000 facilities upgrade line will fund a bus loop at Mineola Middle School and possibly some other projects, he said.
Equipment expenditures will also likely increase by $500,000, Nagler said.
The district could see more state aid after the state adopts a budget in early April, Nagler said.
If that happens, he said, the district could either reduce the amount of appropriated fund balance money or pay for “another one-shot item,” such as installing new lockers at Mineola High School.
“That’s a one-time expense,” Nagler said. “It’s not going to re-occur, it’s got a big effect for our students and our infrastructure, and you could add that.”
Other expense drivers include increases in salaries and healthcare spending, Nagler said.
Like other districts, Mineola is helped this year by decreases in its required contributions to the state teacher and employee retirement funds. But the teacher retirement contributions could increase next year, Nagler said.
“It kind of balances itself out, but you can’t rely on that,” he said.
School board President Christine Napolitano praised the budget, saying the district has recently undertaken important capital improvements, which former administrations had put off.
“When I think about how much has been accomplished over the last, you know, seven, eight years, it’s really remarkable that we’re still able to do this kind of — address these things this way,” she said.
In other developments, Nagler said sod has been laid and a retaining wall has been built in the outfield at Mineola High School’s baseball field, progress in one of the projects in a $7 million package of capital improvements voters approved in the fall.
A fence will be installed in the outfield, and the field should be ready for the first league baseball game of the season in April, Nagler said.
