Following Budget Defeat, Frustrations at N. Babylon Board Meeting

The North Babylon Board of Education will meet Tuesday night to discuss possible cuts to its original $112 budget proposal, which was defeated at the polls last week.

The board made no decisions on how to move forward during a meeting at Robert Moses Middle School last Thursday, but board members said attempting to pierce the tax cap again during a June 18 budget revote would be extremely risky.

“I’m not a gambling person,” trustee Bob Scheid said, referring to the fact that if the budget is defeated again, the board will automatically need to adopt a contingency budget, which would require a total of $3.6 million in cuts from the original proposal.

What seems much more likely is the board slashing $1 million from the budget to bring it within the state’s tax cap. Doing so would mean the revote would only require a simple majority to pass. A budget over the tax cap requires a 60 percent supermajority.  

Cutting $1 million will still be no easy task for a board that felt it had presented a budget that was giving back to students and was fair to taxpayers.

“We believed we were listening to what the community wanted from us,” Board President Janet Meyerson said, referring to funding in the budget for four new elementary school teachers to lower class sizes and upgrades in technology and security.

Voter turnout for last Tuesday’s vote was lower than each of the last three years, Meyerson said.

“People didn’t think it was important to come out,” she said of turnout. “People thought everyone else was going to do that.”

Residents did however turn out to board meeting Thursday night and several had plenty to say.

“You have to address families that are retired, that are on fixed incomes and have to come up with 10-12-$13,000 a year for taxes,” said Alice Cone, the president of the Belmont Lake Civic Association.

Cone said it was the first year that no one from the school board attended a civic association meeting to explain the budget to its members.  When school board members said they had not been invited, Cone responded: “When do we have to invite you to come home?”

Nancy Kirby, a mother of a second-grader in the district, said “this school district has failed my child.”

Kirby, who also took issue with the layout of the budget details on the district’s website, said her daughter “lives on dittos” and that she is not getting needed extra help in reading at school.

“I’m putting the $50 toward her tutoring session because she is not getting what she needs in school,” Kirby said, alluding to the $50 difference in tax hikes between the original budget and one within the tax cap.

Geri-Ann McNamee, who was elected to the school board last week and will take office in July, called the original budget proposal “perfect.”

“You put your heart in that budget and that budget was nothing but fair to everyone in this community,” McNammee said, addressing the board.

Kathy Scheid, the wife of trustee Bob Scheid, urged residents to attend more school board meetings.

“If this budget passed, would you all still be sitting here?,” she said to the more than 50 people in the crowd. “Take this passion and anger and get this to the streets and pass this budget for the children.”

The school board will meet in the the board room Tuesday at 7:45 p.m. at North Babylon High School. A public hearing on the new budget proposal will be held next Tuesday, June 4.