During its regular meeting on Monday, Aug. 16, the Valley Central School District Board of Education acted to reduce the amount of the planned 2010-2011 tax levy by $476,951, or 1 percent. The reduction in the budgeted levy will be offset with an additional appropriation from the school district’s fund balance.

Superintendent Dr. Richard Hooley was pleased to report that this act fulfills the second of two goals the school board expressed to the public during the Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee meetings last winter. The first was to address class sizes with any funds available at the end of the year. The second was to lower taxes in the budget by applying funds to the tax levy.

“This was something we had talked about for awhile but we wanted to make sure we had all of our ducks in a row before making a decision,” Hooley said.

The superintendent went on to explain that the concern about taxes was able to be addressed due to careful stewardship of the 2009-2010 budget. More specifically, the funds are available as a result of effective management of resources, including the ongoing conservative budgeting of revenue and careful monitoring of all spending; the cutting off of purchases except for essential or mandated expenditures for the last half of the school year; the savings to the General Fund by compressing spending of ARRA Title I funds as directed by the federal government; the approximate $120,000 stipend give-back from the teachers and administrators; and the lower unemployment claims than anticipated and effective utilization of grant funds.

The 6.22 percent tax levy increase that was discussed in budget meetings will  now be reduced to 5.22 percent. And while he admits that state equalization rates and a number of other outside factors make it impossible to predict exactly what this means for  individual taxpayers of the district, Hooley agreed that every little bit helps.

“We felt this was the right thing to do for our taxpayers,” he said.

By JESSICA McALEESE
jmcaleese@tcnewspapers.com