Concern Over Going to Tax Cap in $148.4M Bedford School Budget

Bedford School District officials grappled last week with whether they should trim the maximum allowable tax levy proposed in the administration’s $148.4 million budget for 2022-23 to provide relief to residents in a challenging economy.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joel Adelberg presented next year’s budget to the Board of Education on Mar. 9 that increases spending by more than $3.9 million, or 2.72 percent, while going to the limit of a 2.69 percent levy hike.

The proposed budget includes a new director of STEAM, innovation and digital learning and a K-5 math instructional coach and adds a .5 special education for Hillside, the district’s alternative high school, and a full-time bilingual community liaison to communicate more effectively with Spanish speaking families. It also increases the role of the district’s communications specialist and adds a benefits clerk. All current positions in the district are maintained from the current year.

“I really believe that this budget this evening is student-centric,” Adelberg said. “You’ll see that the few adds – there are not many – but the few adds that I’m proposing for your consideration are all about our students and I really tried to propose a budget that places resources as close to the classroom and as close to our students as possible.”

However, during last week’s budget deliberations, there was robust discussion about whether board members should consider providing taxpayers with some relief this year. Board member Robert Mazurek also questioned how the district went to the tax cap ceiling to the dollar.

Adelberg explained that there were far more requests than what he included in the spending plan and many of those needed to be shelved to get to the cap.

One board member, Beth Staropoli, said during the last two budgets the district provided the public with some relief by coming in under the tax cap. She had also warned last year that by going under the cap the board impacted district revenue for years to come, although there had been concerns that state aid would be slashed by 20 percent and revenue from sales tax would crater.

“We have not gone to the tax cap the last two years and I’m in favor of going to the tax cap this year,” Staropoli said. “My only concern is adding in quite a few ongoing commitments knowing that we’re going to be losing our grant funding within a year or two and to try and find the money to maintain some of these positions to keep class size low.”

However, Board Member Steven Matlin said coming in under cap the last two budgets isn’t a reason to reach the maximum now, especially since the district generated about $6 million in surplus during that time. Matlin, who acknowledged that about $3 million of the surplus was pandemic-related, mentioned that he was very concerned about asking taxpayers to pay more at a time of high inflation and nearly $5-a-gallon gas.

“We tax our community what we need, not what we can,” he said.

Board President John Boucher said the proposed budget uses $755,000 in fund balance for one-time expenses.

Those items include $500,000 for a new internal system that would put a phone in each classroom because there are areas of the district where cell service is poor; $210,000 for new K-5 math materials, $25,000 for new music lockers at the middle school and $20,000 for lockdown strobes at the high school and middle school campus.

Mazurek responded that he thought it was ridiculous to support $500,000 for a telephone system without specific information about what that entails.

“If we have to go through another $148 million of these questions, in these (next) two meetings, it’s impossible,” he said. “We’ve got to get things done somewhere else.”

The board will resume its budget review at its next meeting on Wednesday evening.

Martin Wilbur

Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/