Schools

Mineola Superintendent Addresses State Aid Decrease

School officials explain reasons behind $87,000 cut.

had promised local school districts a 4 percent increase in state aid in his 2012-13 state budget. While the vast majority of districts did receive an increase in aid, not all made the 4 percent increase and 10 districts actually received cuts, one of which was Mineola.

Under the governor’s proposal, the district would lose $87,292, or a 1.97 percent decrease in state aid. Due to the loss of state aid and other federal moneys, specifically ARRA funding, the district is facing a loss of about $300,000 in revenue, or about .4 percent.

Mineola Assistant Superintendent of Finance Jack Waters stated that on the district’s financial forms, the state compared what Mineola estimated to spend in 2011-12, using it to determine what it will get in aid for the 2012-13 school year.

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The district’s BOCES number is projected to decrease because “our budget currently reflects a decrease in what we spent last year in certain lines... so our expenditure is down, therefore the amount of money that we would get get aid on would go down,” Waters said during the at the January 19 meeting of the at the .

“We save money and now we’re getting less,” Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler explained. “We spent less and now we getting less aid back, the numbers go down.”

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Waters went on to say that another factor in the cut was the value of the district’s properties, which is based on 2009 figures and represents an increase in the total taxable value, meaning that “in the state’s eyes, we became wealthier; by becoming wealthier, it reduced our aid slightly.”

According to the superintendent, if the district went to a 2.4 increase, they could offset the loss of the state aid and still be within the levy cap.

While the recently implemented property tax cap is supposed to limit increases to 2 percent, there are exemptions for it, which for Mineola, works out to about 2.6 percent.

“The irony there is, that’s more than we’ve been in the past 4 years,” Dr. Nagler said. “So now with the new law we’re actually higher than where we were without the law.”

The cap specifically deals with the tax levy, what the district asks the public to pay, not the overall budget increase.

The superintendent stated that this is one of the reasons the adjusted cap is 2.6 percent, “because they give you credit on the tax levy if you have growth. Where you’re penalized on one end with state aid, they allow you to increase the levy.”

The state legislature has yet to present its own budget proposal.


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