Croton-Harmon Revamps Budget Process in Wake of Audit
In the wake of a state audit that accused the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District of annually overestimating expenses, the district’s director of finance and administration stressed the attention to detail she pays during the budgeting process at a Thursday school board meeting.
Diane Chaissan told the board and a full Croton-Harmon High School Community Room crowd that she was working hard to balance competing needs — like the requirement to stay below the state’s mandated 2 percent tax levy cap and the district’s desire to fund capital projects through reserve funds, not bonding.
Chaissan said the state requires districts to submit budgets that are based on projections and then penalizes them if those planned figures don’t match eventual fiscal realities.
“It’s absurd that they make us guess,” she said. “How can they audit us?”
Croton-Harmon Superintendent Edward Fuhrman had harsh words for the state.
“This is not a one-year problem. Unless legislation changes, unless we get some kind of relief on our fixed expenditures, we will face the same [thing] in ’13-’14 and we may not have the same resources available that we did this year to minimize the impact,” he said. “Minimally it’s immoral, possibly it’s illegal, what we’re being asked to do.”
School Board President Karen Zevin said the change in rules at the state level will force the district to bond capital projects in the future — a policy Croton-Harmon has avoided in recent years.
Zevin said the district is being punished for being fiscally responsible.
“We were really penalized … by paying off our debt,” she said. “We were really penalized by being fiscally prudent.”
Chaissan also told the board about the district’s plan to purchase four buses — three school buses and one wheelchair-accessible van.
The project’s cost will not exceed $335,000, she said, and will be put up to a public vote for bonding.
“Now we actually see that debt is our friend, and I hate that phrase but it keeps coming to mind,” said Chaissan on the decision to bond.
After the board invited public comment, about 30 students came up as a group and allowed Maggie Dinger, 17, a senior at Croton-Harmon High School, to speak on their behalf.
Dinger, a member of the girls’ basketball team, spoke in favor of keeping Ben Martucci, a gym teacher whose job may be reduced from full-time to .6, on the Croton staff.
“When we were playing basketball, this little dilemma was happening the whole time and he never once discussed it because he didn’t want to burden us,” said Dinger, her voice breaking. “By losing Ben, it’s like a family member — that’s how close this community is, and he is a staple in it.”
Board member Teri Lukin reminded Dinger and her group that the board does not have control over which staff member is cut when a department receives notice of a decreased budget.
Assistant Superintendent Deborah O’Connell also gave a presentation to the board on Croton-Harmon’s partnership with a Shanghai school.
“That kind of exchange really adds a lot to the school community and that’s what we should be doing,” board member Neal Haber said.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.