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BEDFORD, N.Y. The Bedford Central School District has to cut nearly $4 million from its proposed 2012-2013 budget so it doesn't raise taxes more than 2 percent, said Superintendent Jere Hochman. The district held a Future Focus meeting this week to explain the new figures regarding the upcoming budget and future capital planning.
As it currently stands, the gap between expenditures and the tax levy is close to $3.75 million, Hochman said. During the focus night, however, the board announced the gap could be as high as nearly $8 million. The district would like to get the spending plan to come in between $110 and $118 million, Hochman said.
Were looking at a gap for next year, somewhere between four to eight million dollars, said Hochman. Think about it, the fact that we could have an $8 million dollar gap in order to continue to move forward with everything that were doing.
Moving forward will not be easy, Hochman said, though the apparent majority of surveyed residents think otherwise. In a survey taken by the district and UNICOM-ARC in late October and November, one of the proposed statements showed that nearly 58.6 percent of 500 residents questioned believe there is more room to cut from Bedford Centrals budget before students would feel the impact.
Hochman used the event to try and dispel that thought, as he believes there is no easy way out of the gap.
Its not like there is one silver bullet answer out there that will fix everything, and thats assuming that 100 percent can agree on what that one item would be, he explained. Were going to have to be creative, we will have to figure out how to proceed in balancing the variables, knowing that the only variable that brings in revenue is raising taxes and weve been very respectful of that.
The district has not raised taxes above the newly state-mandated line of 2 percent in the last three years, with last years rate at 1.8 percent, according to Hochman. Keeping taxes low will be a challenge this year because of the difficult economy as well as the proposed construction to West Patent Elementary and Fox Lane Middle School.
I think the situation is easy to understand, but its hard to come up with the solutions, said Martha Hennig, a community member on the capitol planning committee.
Scott Vallar, a participant of the Focus event, said the district has to consider asking its employees to help cut costs and not just residents.
If youre going out with a big capital budget, then you have to combine it with significant employee concessions to show that everyone is contributing to this need, not just the taxpayers, he said.
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