Yorktown Schools Chief Talks Tax Cap, Unfunded Mandates and Budget Challenges

Yorktown school district Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano said the district has stayed under a self-imposed tax cap for the last three years and they plan on doing the same with the . 

"The Board of Education and the administration understands taxpayers' concerns and we have consistently worked hard to maintain low tax rates," he said during Monday's board of education meeting. "The has every intention to comply with the tax cap legislation."

He explained the tax levy, which is the amount of money that is collected from taxpayers, is approximately $72 million out of the $90 million budget, and the rest of the money comes from government and federal sources, grants, and fundraisers.  

For the 2011-2012 budget, the district had a 2-percent tax levy increase, and a 1.8-percent tax levy increase for the 2010-2011 budget. Napolitano said the average tax levy increase over the last five years was 2.6 percent, and had been significantly reduced from the average tax levy increase of 7.8 percent from 2002 to 2007. 

The problem with the cap is that unfunded mandates drive up costs and school district have a limited ability to meet them. 

More than 100 unfunded and underfunded mandates required by the state and federal governments are causing a gap representing approximately 17 percent of the annual operating costs for the school district, which translates to about $16 million in Yorktown’s current budget, school officials said.

"There wouldn't be a need for a cap if we had some relief from unfunded mandates," Napolitano said. 

In addition to the tax cap legislation and the unfunded mandates, sources of concern for school districts are business tax certioraris. A business tax certiorari permits local businesses to challenge their current and past tax assessments. If a challenge is upheld, each business is legally allowed to collect up to 10 years of claims within 30 days from the district. 

"If it took us 10 years to collect the money, how then do we have the opportunity to pay it back in 30 days without hurting our budget," Napolitano said.

Three years ago the district paid $53,000 back in tax certioraris and in this current budget, Napolitano said they expect to pay back another $1.1 million. 

"The tax cap is a challenge, there is no doubt about it because what that says is that you can only go up $1.4 million," he said. 

And that is if they assume nothing else would go up -- heating costs would stay the same, lights would stay the same, that there would be no snow removal, that there would be no contractual obligations, that there would be no increase in insurance costs. 

"In future years the gaps cannot continued to be reduced by us maximizing resourcing, freezing budgets, cutting costs, we've done that and will continue to do that," Napolitano said. "But there will come a time when we won't be able to do that anymore and I have to, as a Superintendent, look to the future." 

He provided some "possible solutions" -- unfunded mandates could be taken care of by lawmakers providing relief; the period to pay off tax certioraris could be extended beyond the required 30-day period; and officials could look for alternate fundraising sources. 

Napolitano is asking for public support to help identify new funding sources, back local organizations that support Yorktown schools, and stay informed.

"Over the last five years, the district has been fiscally prudent and will continue to exercise discretion in financial management," Napolitano said in a letter posted on the district's website. "The Board and Administration will continue to comply with legislation, maximize resources, reduce spending and freeze budgets when warranted. We also support the Foundation for Excellence in Yorktown Schools and other fundraising organizations, and are investigating alternative funding sources."

The district serves approximately 3,600 student in five schools: and elementary schools, , and .

The next budget work session will be on Monday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. at the cafeteria. Topics will include the athletics and co-curricular budget discussion.

Videos of Board of Education meetings can be viewed on the district website. Meetings are also shown at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on FIOS Channel 27 and at the same times on Cablevision Channel 18 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

__

Thank you for reading! You can "like" Yorktown Patch on Facebook and follow our Tweets.