Published: April 08, 2008 01:41 am            

STARPOINT: Board OKs budget proposal; public votes May 20

The Starpoint school board has OK’d a proposed 2008-09 budget that hikes property taxes 1.2 percent. Voters will have their say on the proposal May 20.

The Board of Education’s spending plan calls for a 3.7 percent increase in the tax levy. Currently the tax rate is $20.59 per $1,000 of assessed property value, and if the assessments stay the same, the rate would increase to somewhere between $20.88 and $20.98 per $1,000. Superintendent C. Douglas Whelan said since the board began working on the budget, the district was able to cut $434,144 from it.

“We took the (current) budget, and moving it forward was an 4.67 percent increase,” he said. “That was unacceptable. So we cut the BOCES budget $43,000; teacher’s salaries $299,000. We cut other budget areas, utilities and medical insurance $92,000.”

Whelan said the district added $107,000 to the budget, which consists of three drama club stipends, a new late bus and keeping an AP chemistry and a physics teacher. The teacher is retiring, but the district wants to keep him around for a year at four-tenths of a full-time position. He would help the new teacher for a year, because finding a person with dual certification in AP chemistry and physics was a “rare commodity,” Whelan said.

Starpoint was expecting about a 4.4 percent increase in state aid from the current school year, which Whelan called accurate. Any additional aid could bring the levy and tax rate down.

The total budget is $41, 883,820, which can be misleading if compared to the current budget of $42 million, Whelan said. The current budget included about $2 million used from a reserve account for the $15 million capital project. To keep things accurate, the district worked on the proposed budget using the $40 million current budget as comparison. State law requires a district to show residents a current budget with the money used from the reserve account, and a current budget without it.

The budget reflects a 3.86 percent increase in expenditures from the current school budget. The reasons were increases in the costs of utilities and fuel, and a 264 percent increase in workers compensation, according to Whelan. The costs there rose from $65,000 to $225,000.

An increasing number of teacher stipends in the budget was a concern for some of the board members. Linda Biernat and Greg Brehm voiced their concerns, but did vote in favor of the budget. Biernat said her concern was not against the teachers or clubs, but rather adding stipends to the budget every year bothered her.

“My concern is adding more and more stipends every year,” she said. “Once they’re approved, they go into the contract and basically set in concrete.”

Brehm said he would like to see some way of pulling some of the stipends out of the contract in the future.

“It’s a huge chunk of money every year,” he said.

District residents will be voting at the Board Election and Budget Vote on May 20. There are three open seats on the board for the upcoming school year.

Contact reporter Joe Olenickat 439-9222, ext. 6241.

        

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