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Lake Placid School
District officials say they’re planning to reduce personnel in the
budget for the 2009-2010 school year, and the board of education is
expected to give an update on the district’s budget scenario at
tonight’s meeting.
According to Lake
Placid School District Superintendent Jim Donnelly, the personnel
cuts are just the tip of the iceberg on what looks to be a rough
fiscal year.
“It’s going to be
tough,” said Donnelly. “We’re facing a three-fold challenge this
year involving increases in salary, doubling of health care and the
drop in the assessment of a property that provides quite a bit of
tax revenue for us.”
Donnelly explained
that current contract increases will raise the budget line for
salaries by approximately $300,000. The district is expecting to
spend roughly $326,000 on health care in the coming year, leaving
the district with $600,000 in budget increases.
State aid for
2009-2010 was expected to be cut by nearly $200,000, but Donnelly
said that the board wasn’t as concerned about the loss of state
funds as it was over the budget line increases.
The district is also
anticipating a $250,000 to $300,000 loss of revenue due to the
reassessment of the Whiteface Lodge property.
“From what we’re
being told, there will be a drop in that assessment now,” said
Donnelly. “There’s an anticipated loss of revenue there that could
total nearly $300,000.”
Donnelly said that
between the loss of state aid and the anticipated revenue loss from
the Whiteface Lodge litigation, the board is facing budget cuts
totaling at least $500,000.
13 employees are
eligible for retirement, Donnelly said, but only one or two of those
individuals are likely to retire. The superintendent explained that
the economic situation is prompting employees to continue working
because they are no longer assured that they can live off of their
investments.
“We also have to keep
about $130,000 in a liability fund,” Donnelly added. “We wouldn’t
want every retirement eligible individual to leave, because we offer
a severance of $26,000.”
The district cannot
use the $130,000 elsewhere in the budget, Donnelly explained,
because the money is a safeguard in case of retirement.
Lake Placid
anticipated $255,000 in federal stimulus money for the 2009-2010
budget, but $125,000 in construction funds were cut from that
number. Donnelly said $135,000 is a more realistic number at this
point.
The board, however,
is not willing to commit those stimulus monies to the budget for
next year, because those numbers aren’t yet set in stone.
“That’s money we
could get,” Donnelly said. “Everything is ‘guess-timate’ work right
now. The problem is, I really can’t build that into the budget
because we don’t know when it will happen or what will happen.”
The New York State
School Boards Association could not commit to any specific numbers
either, Donnelly added.
Additionally, the
stimulus money is mandated, and would be required to pay salaries
for special education employees, for example.
“By the time we see
those funds, we’ll be moving them around quite a bit,” Donnelly
said. “We’ll use that money to pay for salaries where we are allowed
to do so.”
The Lake Placid
School District Board of Education meets tonight at 7 p.m. at the
Administration Building.
“The two meetings in
March are going to be the most important meetings,” Donnelly said.
“Hopefully by the second meeting, we’ll have a finalized budget.”
-- Chris Morris,
3/3/09 |