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Two Lansing boards met Monday to discuss their upcoming budgets, but the discussions couldn't have been more starkly different.  In the Village of Lansing the Trustees were looking at a rosy picture.  Last year they actually lowered the tax rate when they closed out the Triphammer Road reconstruction project.  This year they are keeping their budget in check, even though they'll be adding a new full time position to their Department of Public Works.  "I must say it's nice to be able to keep the tax rate the same," Mayor Donald Hartill said.

But the picture was bleak at the Lansing Board Of Education meeting, where the school district is looking at personnel cuts along with other cuts to take a possible half million dollars out of their budget.  Superintendent Stave Grimm and Interim Business Administrator David Klemm walked the board through a painful process they are going through to make the most sensible cuts with the least impact to students.  "We want to know the implications of each reduction, the effects on students, and on faculty and staff, the effect on facilities, any additional resources we might need, any actions that might be needed that are implications of any of those reductions."


And while Village Trustees joked about cuts to their luncheon meeting food budget lowering taxes even further, the tone was somber at the school board.  "At our last meeting I presented a rollover budget of $23,992,087," Klemm began.  "In order to get to 7% we would have to cut $351,000 from the rollover budget.  We have actually made tentative reductions of $360,702.  That comes down to a 6.96% budget to budget reduction.  That's just on the appropriations side.  It has nothing to do with revenues.  In order to get to 5% we had to cut $793,000 and change.  The tentative reductions that we have so far are $811,000.  That brings us to 4.01%."


A rollover budget is the dollar amount that it would cost the district next year if nothing changed from this year.  The cost goes up because of contractual obligations, rises in the cost of heating oil and fuel for school busses, rises in BOCES fees, and so on.  To get to a budget that is 7% higher than last year $351,151 would have to be cut from the rollover budget. 

But that 7% is not rise in the tax levy.  It's the rise in the overall budget.  The tax levy is the part of that budget that taxpayers fund, after other sources of income are factored into the income side of a budget.  With a 7% rise in the expenditure side of the budget for next year the tax levy impact would be 10.16%.  That means other income streams are not keeping up with the rise in the expenditure side.  And other problems such as overspending a possible $262,000 this year will have to be made up in our next tax bill.

Even a budget that is 5% higher than this year would mean a 7% rise in tax impact, a number some board members were unhappy with.  School Board member David Dittman wants a 3% increase in the tax levy, which he said could mean another half million dollars in cuts.  Dittman asked Klemm where the district would go to reduce the budget that much.  "At that point there's only one place you can go," Klemm said.  "Staff and benefits."

Klemm outlined a seemingly endless list of concerns.    He said that transportation and buildings and grounds have been under-budgeted in past recent years.  'High-cost children' attending BOCES programs are another item the said can't be cut, and, indeed, should be increased to allow for new, unforeseen students with special needs.  Additionally past school boards have raided contingency funds to help lower taxes in past years.  Klemm noted that now there are no contingency funds for buildings, furnaces, and so on.  Gas and diesel, electricity and gas price rises will also impact the budget. 

Deterioration of buildings was another concern he listed, with all but one failing a state walk-through inspection last year, add to the district's needs.  "Our facilities are getting older," Klemm said.  "Things are starting to break down.  Motors are going, furnaces.  These are not in the rollover budget.  There is no contingency in this budget for any major repairs."


There was some good news at least on that front.  Grimm noted that an energy performance contract the district is considering could save the schools up to $4 million over a period of 18 years.  And $450,000 of New York State Excel aid could allow the district to do about a million and a half dollars worth of capital work at no cost to the taxpayers.

Klemm said that he worries about perceptions as well as reality when asking residents for tax monies.  At the beginning of each year county, town, village, fire district and other taxes are all presented on the same bill.  Until this year the school tax was the only one on the bill mailed in the summer.  But since a library tax was approved starting this year that will also appear on the school tax bill.  "The library is not a tax burden on the district," Klemm explained.  "But when a voter gets his tax bill and sees he's paying more money than last year, because that tax is now part of the bill that is sent out by the school district."

He also said that the new property tax assessments are of concern, with a third of Lansing properties going up this year above and beyond the 15% of fair market value that is being adjusted on all properties to express 100% of air market value.  Last year the Assessment Department used 85% of fair market value to express assessments. 

Grimm has been conducting what he calls a 'feedback loop' of informational and information gathering sessions to include all the stakeholder groups in the budget process.  He has met with teachers and administrators, soliciting suggestions for cuts along with their impact to students and the district.  "We're coming together as a community of employees, sharing information about what the current reality is," Grimm said.  "In that process we are sharing some documents."

That reality is going to become more difficult in the next few weeks as administrators and school board members get down to specific cuts.  But Grimm wants to continue talking to teachers, and is planning a public town-hall style meeting for residents to provide information and get feedback from taxpayers before deciding on what specific cuts will be made.  Starting with a 7% budget officials will have to cut an additional $155,000 for every percent decrease.  Starting with a 5% budget each additional percentage point will cost $150,000. 

"We do want to honor the process we have put in place before making decisions," Grimm said.  "The only place to get that from is working with the leadership team and the teachers.  This is a very important week for our faculty and staff to be able to get that information to the principals and to me so we can start openly discussing some of the uncomfortable topics."

Klemm says the final decision has to be made no later than April 22, but school administrators prefer April 7th.  "These are going to be some very, very difficult decisions that we need to deal with," he said.

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