SALAMANCA — With the Salamanca City Central School District’s 2018-19 budget vote about two months away, the Board of Education recently reviewed the first tentative numbers for the upcoming budget.
Karen Magara, assistant superintendent for finance and operations, presented to the board last month preliminary figures for the possible $36.4 million budget, which includes a 78 percent reduction to the tax levy.
“It’s a 15 percent increase over the current budget, even though we’ll be looking at reducing the taxes down to $250,000,” she said.
A second budget presentation by Magara and some of the school principals discussing in detail specific parts of the budget was expected to take place at Tuesday’s regular board meeting.
Although the proposed spending plan has an increase from the current budget of about $4.4 million, Magara noted that reducing the tax levy by 78 percent would bring the funds raised by taxes from $1.15 million down to $250,000.
Among the new positions requested for next year’s budget were technology specialists for Prospect and Seneca, a computer science/technology for the high school, an occupational therapist, a special education teacher and teacher assistant for the high school, an AHSEP coordinator and staff member, a speech therapist for Prospect, summer program administrators, four bus drivers and monitors, three building monitors, interns and a school resource officer for Prospect.
Additional funds are being added to textbook lines to speed up the replacement of textbooks
in all areas. Magara said Guided Reading books would also be provided for Prospect and Seneca.
The proposed administrative and operations budget is going up about 10 percent, roughly $200,000, with the biggest increases expected in the board of education line for travel expenses for the state school board conference and in the legal line for increased legal costs.
For facilities and grounds, the proposed budget would see a 7 percent decrease of about $110,000 because it no longer needed funds for the Seneca Intermediate playground. The transportation budget expects a roughly 24 percent increase of about $360,000 due mostly to plans to purchase three new busses and two new vans for district use.
In November, the district held a budget retreat with members of the board, administration, various unions and community to discuss how to best use the money they have. One of the objectives Magara said was to include one‐time expenditures to spend down some of the unreserved fund balance.
“What we needed to do was invest in our education and protect our assets,” she said. “We exceeding the four percent on our reserve fund balance, so we need to spend it down in different ways.”
Magara said thinking of unique ways in which they could use their reserve fund balance led to over 100 items mentioned during the retreat, about 50 percent of which are addressed in the 2018-19 budget.
“One of the things that we framed was to think about immediate impactful things,” said Superintendent Robert Breidenstein. “That is staffing, supplies and materials, equipment and things like that.”
Breidenstein said many of those items would be one-time expenses that would be impactful and not be recurring costs in subsequent years.
“We’re not saying build a new gym or a pool or a bowling alley, any of those big capital project type things,” she said. “But the curriculum, the staffing, those types of things are included.”
For salaries and benefits, Magara said all contracts are current with the soonest expiring in 2021. Health insurance is expected to increase up to 5 percent and dental insurance is locked in at current rates for 2018‐19.
As far as how the budget will be funded, about $22.3 million is expected to come New York state aid. Although this is a 2.3 percent increase in funding, Magara said the state’s legislative budget has not yet been presented. A final state budget is due April 1.
(Contact reporter Kellen Quigley at kquigleysp@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter, @Kellen_Quigley)
