Lynbrook Officials Break Down Tax Cap-Piercing Budget Ahead Of May 19 Vote

LYNBROOK, NY — As voters gear up to head to the ballots for school boards and budgets, one Nassau County district is at a crossroads: Lynbrook, where the public school district’s proposed budget would increase its tax levy by 1.97 percent.

According to district officials, that increase is one of the smallest in Nassau County — Superintendent Dr. Paul Lynch said the district’s 10-year average tax levy increase is 2.02 percent, while the Nassau County average is 2.24 percent and the Long Island average is 2.56 percent — but it’s also one that almost doubles what New York State formulae say the district can impose.

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Under state law, districts use a formula that factors in things like debt service, payment in lieu of tax (PILOT) agreements in their communities and capital projects already in the budget to determine how much they’re allowed to raise their tax levy in a given year. Some of those factors, like the capital improvements, are within district control, while others — namely the PILOTs, which function as agreements between municipalities and private entities — are not.

The end result of the formula in Lynbrook is a permissible tax levy increase that fluctuates depending on the year. In 2023-24, Lynbrook’s tax cap formula permitted an increase of more than 4 percent, which would have needed a simple majority — over 50 percent of votes in favor of the budget — to pass. In the end, Lynbrook proposed a budget that increased its tax levy by just 2.6 percent.

“We didn't need the cash [in 2023-24], and [the board of education] felt that it was not really not the fair thing to do for the community. So we chose to leave $1.5 million on the table because of the PILOTs,” Lynch told Patch Tuesday. “Fast forward to this year…some of those PILOTs come back on…it depresses our levy down to less than 1 percent. And when all is said and done, we're asking the voters for $800,000 more. We're below our 10 year average. We're below the Nassau County average. We're even below 2 percent.”

To be precise, the state formula this year allowed Lynbrook Schools to impose a tax levy increase of just 0.95 percent. In a March presentation to the Lynbrook School Board, Lynch said that was the second-lowest allowable tax levy increase in Nassau County; adding that the district actually would have needed to reduce its tax levy by $327,000 for this year’s budget if not for some exemptions.

With a small tax cap imposed by the state, Lynbrook is now asking voters for permission to do something it has never done: Under its proposed budget, Lynbrook would impose a tax levy increase greater than the maximum that New York State has calculated, known in some circles as “piercing the cap.”

When a district attempts to pierce the cap, it can no longer pass its budget by simple majority. Instead, it needs a 60 percent “super majority” of votes to pass the budget. If the budget doesn’t get that super majority in the May vote, Lynch said the district can either propose the same budget for a second vote in June or propose a more limited budget that comes in under the tax cap.

“Those are the kind of choices the board has. And if they have to make those choices, they will think about it,” Lynch said. “We're doing what we've always done. We're putting out a responsible budget, and we suspect that our voters will endorse it. If not, then there's some choices to be made.”

According to Joel Press, the assistant superintendent for finance, operations and information systems, the 1.97 percent increase in tax levy would increase school district tax by about $100 for the average homeowner.

Press said he’s in his third year in his current role, but prior to coming to Lynbrook he spent time in districts that had difficulty passing their budgets in May. In two consecutive years, Lynch said, the board at his old district made two different decisions: One year, the board reduced its budget and it passed, and the following year the board put forth the same budget a second time, and it passed in June.

If the budget doesn’t pass in May or June, the district is forced to operate on a contingency budget, which forces the district to operate with a tax levy increase of 0 percent. That outcome, Press said, he hasn’t experienced.

As for the contents of the budget, the superintendent said he's most excited by two things: A commitment to keeping class sizes small in grades K-2 and the development of a new department at the high school.

"The high school career and technical education department, that is a game changer,” Lynch said. “We have been involved in a process for the last few years called the Profile of the Owl, which is aligning our curriculum to what our community told us they wanted. And one of the things they thought we were lacking in was real life skills. I can think of no better way than a career and technical education department doing real life skills. I couldn't be happier about that, and then keeping our K-2 class size small, that was a board priority — that the young kids have a small class size so that our youngest learners can have such a positive experience."