Croton-Harmon School District Vote Tuesday

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – Croton-Harmon School District voters will head to the polls Tuesday to vote on the district’s $43.3 million budget, a school bus proposition worth $335,000 and two incumbent board members.

“We can no longer develop a budget with the goal of balancing educational needs and the taxpayer needs,” wrote Croton-Harmon Superintendent Edward Fuhrman in his budget message. Fuhrman said the combination of state mandates and the tax levy cap means “areas of potential cuts are limited, and do in fact directly impact services to children.”

Polls will be open in the Croton-Harmon High School gymnasium from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The dollar amount of Croton-Harmon’s proposed budget decreased by $474,435, or 1.1 percent. Despite the dollar amount decrease, the portion of the district’s budget to be paid for through local property taxes, the tax levy, increases by 0.61 percent in the proposed budget. Although the New York tax cap is generally set at 2 percent, each district uses a complex equation provided by the state to calculate an individual tax levy cap, Croton’s is capped at 0.61 percent.

For the Town of Cortlandt, the tax rate will increase an estimated 1 percent, to $1,102 per $1,000 of assessed valuation. For the average home in Cortlandt assessed at $7,700, the estimated annual tax bill would be $8,491.  

District officials say tax rates only can be estimated because the outcome of a number of tax certiorari cases will not be known for some months. Tax certiorari cases arise from tax assessment grievances. Since the beginning of the recession, the cases most commonly challenge that tax assessments are overvalued. For school districts, the most impactful of these tax certiorari cases are from commercial real estate, or multi-family dwellings, such as condominium complexes.

The ballot also contains a proposition to finance four new school buses at a cost of $335,000. The buses would be financed through five-year bond anticipation notes.

The ballot also will ask voters to approve or deny the Croton Free Library’s tax levy of $782,097, and to vote for two school board trustees. Trustees Andrea Furey and Guiseppina Miller are incumbents running unopposed.

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