SALAMANCA — Salamanca Board of Education members got their first look Feb. 28 at the school district’s preparations for the 2023-24 budget that will be voted on by district residents May 16.
Karen Magara, assistant superintendent for operations and finance, said where the preliminary budget ends up before approval is still unknown.
“We don’t know what our final budget numbers are going to be yet, but we do know what our tax levy is going to be,” she said.
The budget is expected to see no change in taxes, remaining at $250,000 for the sixth consecutive year after being over $1 million a decade ago. Using the state’s tax levy calculations, Magara said if the district decided to raise taxes it could only legally go up 0.17% — a whopping $416.
“If we had a real tax levy like other school districts, we would have to decrease it by almost $800,000,” she explained. “But because we’re buying buses, buying trucks, buying other equipment, paying on our debt service, we add back in $1,043,000.”
The initial proposed budget came in at about $53.42 million, a nearly 15% increase over the current budget at $47.43 million. In addition to “wish list” items, the significant cost hikes come from rising contractual costs and inflation affecting wages, health insurance, benefits and utilities.
The biggest increases came in salaries going up $3 million, or 13%; contractual up $2.1 million, or 50%; and BOCES up $855,000, or 13%. However, debt services are expected to decrease by $873,000, or 26%.
“We’re really looking at where is that $6 million increase and what can we decrease out of there,” Magara said. “We should not be coming to the public with a $53 million budget at this point. We’ll figure out where we need to trim it.”
As of Tuesday, Magara said 14 staff have indicated they intend to retire this year, including one who retired early in January. However, she said there are about 12 new positions proposed for the next budget in addition to filling most of those open spots from retirements.
At this point, there are several unknowns for calculating all the revenues for the preliminary budget, Magara said, including the full amount of state aid the district will receive and how much of the fund balance and Impact Aid the district will ultimately use.
“We got a big increase in Foundation Aid. Right now we’re looking at an increase of $2.7 million,” she said. “All of those add up to about $4.47 million of monies that we’re going to see next year that we didn’t see this year.”
