Roger Catania, superintendent, Lake Placid Central School District (Enterprise photo — Jessica Collier)

LAKE PLACID — A day after the state government finalized a two-month extension of this year’s budget, the Lake Placid school board agreed to offer voters a $18,723,883 budget for 2017-18.

That’s a spending increase of 1.86 percent over this year, with a tax levy increase of 1.58 percent. The school board unanimously passed the budget with two members absent, Jeffrey Brownell and Linda O’Leary.

The budget will be put to voters on May 16, along with the vote on the district’s proposed multi-million-dollar capital project and three open board seats.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Lake Placid Central School District board meeting, Superintendent Roger Catania didn’t mince words when it came to his thoughts on how the state government’s failure to pass a budget by the April 1 deadline handcuffed districts like his across the state.

The budget extension did not address new school aid for 2017-18, instead continuing existing payments through the end of the current school year.

“We’ve been talking all along (the budget process) about, sometime near the end of March, we would hear from Albany and help to consolidate (our) budget plan,” Catania said. “But in many ways, that hasn’t happened. … We really don’t know what our state aid is going to be next year.”

Catania continued to say that although Lake Placid, like other districts across the state, has had to finalize budgets in prior years when the state was also late on its budget, those situations did not occur during the current “tax cap era.”

Catania said in previous years of late budgets, a school district like Lake Placid’s could properly adjust its property tax rate despite budget tardiness.

The superintendent also expressed how he and district Business Manager Leonard Sauers felt that proposed cuts at the federal level, under new President Donald Trump, have trickled down to the school district level. Catania noted how Trump proposed proposed dramatic cuts in federal aid to public education and also said the district, in the third year of its current contract agreement, has yet to come to an agreement on employee salaries for next year.

As a result of these situations, which Catania classified as “uncertainties,” the superintendent said he was proposing a final budget to the board that eliminated several hoped-for elements that had been discussed throughout the process.

“(We) don’t really know how this is going to impact us,” Catania said of the proposed cuts to federal aid, “but it has us worried.

“I think it’s unfortunate that at a time when our economy is improving and very healthy, a lot of these (elements) are not coming from natural economic problems,” he added. “They are coming from politics and policy makers. These are the restrictions that are being placed on us, (and I) worry this is a value system.”

The proposed budget equates to an estimated tax rate of $7.07 per $1,000 of assessed property value, an increase of 1.65 percent compared to last year. The proposal includes an increase in salaries of 2.03 percent ($372,399), miniscule decreases in employee and teacher retirement, and a 0.02 percent increase in health insurance ($4,497).

This budget is essentially the district’s “Option 3” that officials have been discussing for several months, which removes several budgeted positions and also results in the district not being able to increase funding for several programs and technology needs as officials hoped. With a current deficit of $172,211, Option 3 removes a math coaching position budgeted at $43,000, removes a middle-high school librarian position also budgeted at $43,000, removes health insurance for two positions worth $44,000, and removes an additional $33,350 worth of program and technology funding.

Under Option 3, the district is budgeting for just $8,861 in additional fund balance and state aid compared to an estimated $172,211 in their more ambitious Option 1. At Tuesday’s meeting, the board discussed how the final change to the proposed budget included a last-minute addition of $10,000 for math coaching and $10,000 for technology.