School Budget With No Tax Levy Hike Still Brings Concern

Financial times are such that even when the Long Beach School District proposes a budget with a 0 percent increase in the tax levy, the amount of money raised by taxes, many residents have come down on the district and Board of Education for not doing more to relieve their tax burden.  

The board on April 5 adopted its proposed 2011-12 budget that totals $118.6 million, representing a 1.8 percent hike, or $2.1 million increase from the current spending plan. Since unveiling the new numbers on March 8, the district has heard and read many residents’ concerns, from board meeting attendees to budget committee members to taxpayers leaving writing on Internet message boards.

They’ve heard everything from claims that the budget’s increase still amounts to $320 more in annual taxes per household, to outcries that residents can no longer afford to live in Long Beach due to taxes.

One repeated concern is the district’s trend of a declining student population over the past seven years. Damien Sciano, a Long Beach resident who previously served on the district’s facilities committee, questioned the district’s budgeting practices mainly in relation to the decreased enrollment and costs per student, and predicted the district will fall on hard times.

“I think you’re covering up a fairly significant deficit, where you’re going to fall off a cliff in a year or two,” Sciano told the school board in March.

Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg disagreed with Sciano’s forecast. He and Michael DeVito, the district’s chief operating officer, noted that the proposed budget’s $2.1 million increase reflects the initial interest payments on a $98 million bond that the community approved in 2009 in order to fund the first phase of a district-wide preservation project to upgrade schools and facilities.

Yet some have questioned the need for some of these upgrades. George Costello, a West Pine Street resident, disagreed with the district’s decision to build a new athletic field at the middle school.

“I think in these times, when people are really suffering and having a hard time paying their mortgages, a $5 million field for sixth-graders to play football on is quite frankly ridiculous,” he told the board in March.  

Others residents have focused on the budget’s larger percentage increases that come in the form of state mandates, including teachers’ retirement and health insurance, as well as unemployment insurance, which is projected to go up 333 percent, from $30,000 to $130,000. 

The Citizens Budget Advisory Committee, a group of residents and taxpayers of Long Beach, singled out these increases among 17 proposals that they offered to the Board of Education before its trustees adopted the proposed budget on April 5. The Committee noted increase in employee benefits — $9.21 million or 44.3 percent higher than 2009-10 expenses — for special focus during its presentation on March 22.

In a slide presentation, Lilly Newman, committee chairwoman and a retired banker, exhibited medical insurance costs, which were about $11 million in 2009 and are projected to increase to $15.4 million in the proposed budget, as the most influential factor in the collective incline of benefit costs.

Additionally, the presentation showed that the increases to state and teachers’ retirement combined, $1.4 million and $3 million, respectively, to about $2.5 million and $6 million, exceed that of health insurance in percentage. Their costs, however, add up to just more than half of medical benefits. Health insurance alone costs more than all other categories of benefits combined by nearly $1 million.

“If the trend in health insurance is allowed to continue, it’s inevitable that there’s going to be competition between programs for children and paying for health insurance,” Newman predicted.

Frank McQuade, a Long Beach resident and attorney who joined the committee three years ago, said that he wants “the school board and the public to change the culture of over spending.”

Meanwhile, the district expects a cut of about $2.5 million in state aid, more than $2 million less than the district expected to receive for 2011-12 and $3.3 million less than it received under the current plan. To compensate for this lost revenue, the district proposes to tap its reserve fund, at about $3 million, and fund balance, approximately $4 million, which are surpluses accumulated over seven years. 

While Long Beach will add teachers in some areas, overall there will be a greater reduction of teacher positions next school year, about 13 in all, but Greenberg said that these actions are not budget-driven.

“The reductions in staffing are due to enrollment, and not necessarily tied to the budgets,” the superintendent said.

At the budget’s unveiling, Greenberg emphasized that the spending plan maintains all existing programs. But there are some residents who worry that perhaps he and DeVito had devised an underfunded budget.

Lynn Gergen, a former school board trustee: “I want to know that in brining in this lower budget, that you feel comfortable that you are protecting this district with this budget."

Greenberg said that he did not believe the budget was too low. “I think that when all is considered, the fact that we have the debt to repay and we’re not getting state aid for another year, we did what we could,” he said.

The vote for the budget and the school board election are May 17. The seats of board trustees Dennis Ryan and Patrick Gallagher are up for re-election.

The Citizens Budget Advisory Committee’s proposals to the school board:

2011 Proposals:

1. Support a decrease in the budget or a decrease in the tax levy. There has been historically high cost for public education in our district. Favor a budget that is prudent and looks to cost-containment where possible.
2. Urge the School District to take confident negotiating stance that supports fiscally prudent positions at contract negotiations and takes general economic conditions in the community into consideration.
3. Those who negotiate new contracts for the district should be independent of interest in the outcome. We urge the school district to abide by its conflict of interest policies.
4. Engage in legislative activism with State and County legislators. Oppose new State unfunded mandates passed to the school district by our State legislators, and do away with existing unfunded mandates.
5. Reduce staff through attrition where feasible -- when they retire or leave, and save those salary lines.
6. Standardize the district’s list of supplies to maximize purchasing power. Purchase uniform product brands throughout the district in order to be able to purchase in greater bulk and to realize greater savings.
7. Ask for Request for Proposals for all contracted services. Regularly send out RFP for insurance agents, auditors, brokers, attorneys, architects, etc. Renegotiate insurance rates.
8. Put the Security Services contract out to bid. Investigate why Long Beach security costs are significantly higher than nearby comparable districts.
9. The goal for Food Services should be to become self-sustaining, and even show a profit. Do not out-source the food services. Raise the cost of meals and look for other revenue means. Increase participation rates through regular ongoing meetings with students for obtaining their likes and dislikes.
10. Increase the number of students assigned to school buses in order to reduce the amount of buses in use.
11. Send on-line newsletters in place of printed mailings.
12. Support greater transparency in publicizing bonding proposals.
13. Investigate the possibility that Atlantic Beach joins our school district.
14. Discontinue free tuition of children of faculty who attend Long Beach schools while living out of the district.
15. For a fee, offer bus service to Island Park students attending the High School. They are currently paying for private transportation.
16. Eliminate the purchase or lease of any motor vehicles for private or official use by administrative personnel.
17. Enforce “green” practices throughout the School District. Conduct an energy audit.