Tupper school budget passes, 622 to 506; bus proposition nixed by tiny margin

by Dan McClelland

In one of the largest voter turn-outs in years, residents of the three towns of the Tupper Lake Central School District gave a solid thumbs up to the district’s controversial $21.9 million financial plan for the new school year.

At the annual meeting and budget vote held in the high school library on Tuesday, May 21 there were 622 “yes” votes cast, compared with the 506 “no” votes.

A week before the vote at the annual budget hearing, over 100 school district residents came out to ask questions about the plan proposed and cite concerns about the consequences to students next school year should it be defeated. Typically only several members of the public- and some years no one- attend the budget hearing. It is customarily about a week in advance of the budget vote and school board election.

A letter to the editor from Bruce Smith, a editorial in the Free Press and two full-page advertisements paid for by local businessman and resident Eric Shaheen all called for the budget to be rejected, as too big an increase all at once.

At earlier budget meetings this spring the board had before it two options for a budget to send to voters- one forecasting a tax levy hike of 4.5% and one with a 9% proposed hike, which carried less faculty and staff cuts. The board in the end selected a version of the latter, but with a 8.75% levy in prospect.

A coalition of budget supporters, including parents, school leaders, faculty and staff at the district all rallied following those calls for the administration to produce a more taxpayer-tolerant plan in a second vote. The outspoken budget supporters, who argued defeat of the budget would take away many important opportunities for local school children, were credited with the budget passage that day.

The adopted budget now means school taxpayers will see an increase of about 8.75% in their taxes when they open their school tax bills in late summer. The exact tax rates, however, which reflect the levy, will not be announced until later this summer when the assessments in the three towns in the district are finalized. The budget sent to the voters for consideration this month featured a levy that was under the state’s 9.18% allowed tax levy cap for this school district for the coming school year.

About $1 million of the $21.9 million financial plan was factored in from the district’s $20 million capital improvement plan adopted by voters earlier this school year.

While they got their budget passed, elected leaders and school administrators suffered a narrow loss on their proposition to buy two new school buses again this year. The proposition vote went down by just a squeaker of three votes: 562 “yes” votes to 565 against.

In recent years the district has been on a bus replacement plan where two new vehicles are ordered every year on a five-year rotation of the fleet. The bus replacement strategy increases state transportation aid the district receives each year and permits the district to sell its five year old buses and receive a much higher trade-in value, than if they were sold after seven or eight years of use.

Since the proposition failed, the district will not be permitted to continue its ongoing replacement plan, at least for this year.

Of the approximately 1,128 voters who went to the polls on May 21, 879 voted for School Board President Jane Whitmore and 870 for Vice President Jason Rolley. Both those volunteers have served on the board for over a decade, and most of those in the leadership roles.

The two board leaders were unopposed in their re-election bids.

For School Superintendent Russ Bartlett, who is retiring at the close of June, the budget’s passage was gratifying. He said he “very much appreciated the people who came out to support the budget, and actually “everyone in the district who took it upon themselves to be educated about the proposed budget and who came out to vote either way.”

He admitted to being “pleasantly surprised” by the budget passage and the size of the voter turnout this year.

He noted the voter turn-out was very large this year, and more than the voter participation at the last two budget votes combined. Last year only about 300 voters cast their ballots for the budget predicting only a 3.06% tax levy increase and it was narrowly adopted by only eight votes.

In the literature school officials circulated in advance of the annual meeting and at various budget preparation meetings, it was said of the $21.9 million spending plan that the tax levy in prospect would cost the owner of a property assessed at $100,000 about $137 more when they received their tax bills in September.

Unfortunately many properties here are assessed far more than $100,000.

Mr. Bartlett said that the bus proposition has failed in previous years on occasion, “and so we hope we can get another year” out of the buses that the district had planned to retire this year.
“Five years has always been picked (for replacement) because it is the sweet spot of reliability and resale value.”

“So the only thing we can do now, in terms of those buses we wanted to retire, is cross our fingers and hope they stand up for another year!”

State bus regulations are very strict. For example, even though a school bus may be mechanically sound, if there is one area of rust on the body or chassis, it must be pulled from the fleet.

He speculated that a second bus vote might take place, but that will be up to the school board, based on a review of the current status of the bus fleet.

At the heart of the budget debate here this year was a $1.7 million budget deficit forecast.

Here is what school officials said about that in the budget literature that was distributed.

“Roughly $1.1 million in federal COVID funds that we began receiving in 2021 are set to run out in September. You may have noticed that we haven’t replaced many positions that have become vacant this past year or two if we could help it. Yes...we have replaced a couple...because there is always the hope that we will be able to retain the things that we offer kids. But alas, it was not to be. So if you add up all the positions that have been left vacant from 2022 to now, what appears on paper to be 16 or 17 cuts, actually resulted in roughly five or six… The majority of these positions have been vacant or will become vacant at the end of this year without someone losing their job in many cases.

“A few years ago we proposed a budget with a modest 3.06% tax levy increase. It passed by a margin of only eight votes. In subsequent years, portions of the district’s fund balance (roughly $350,000 in each of two years) were used to offset the tax levy and we did not levy the full tax cap amount available out of fear that a budget with the full levy might get the support it needed to pass. In an effort to minimize the financial impact on the community, we left money on the table, as they say in the business office. And now the full impact of those decisions are at our doorstep. We were always going to get to the point we are right now, but we’re there now in one larger step instead of a few smaller steps. You always hope that election cycles will offer up more funding as they sometimes have in the past, but that hasn’t happened recently.

“Voters also approved a capital project referendum in October of 2023 to improve, repair, replace a number of the school district’s facilities and structures. This year’s tax levy includes a portion of that project’s previous discussed increase in costs.”

The budget newsletter also spelled out exactly what would happen if the budget was defeated. It left the board with three options: submit the same budget for a second vote, submit a revised budget for a second vote or adopt a contingency budget.

“If the budget was rejected a second time, the board must adopt a contingency budget. The tax levy under a contingent budget, by state law, can be no greater than the tax levy of the prior year (that is, no tax levy increase). That would mean looking for an additional $800,000 in cuts, and there certainly wasn’t a lot of wiggle room to remove much from where we are now. More cuts would mean we need to start carving away opportunities that round out and make the school experience whole in the name of preserving what we have to provide in order to meet legal requirements. Nobody wants that!”