SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Central School District Board of Education adopted a $37.3 million budget on Monday, which stays below the state-imposed tax cap and uses around two-fifths of the district’s healthy reserves to make up for the loss of pandemic-era state and federal aid.

Taxpayers will take a vote on this budget at the polls on May 21. A public hearing on the budget will be held at 5 p.m. on May 8 in the high school library and streamed on YouTube at tinyurl.com/3ee4wytk.

The $37.3 million budget increases spending by 3.61%, which is $1.3 million more than the current year.

The district plans to collect, or levy, $24,492,938 in taxes for this budget — $842,659 more than the current year, a 3.56% increase — but $1,479 below the tax cap. This cap limits the amount districts can raise the levy year-to-year, and SLCSD’s cap was set this year at 3.57%.

As usual, staff salaries and benefits make up the majority of the budget, around 75% of expenditures.

The district will present its estimated impacts on the tax rates at its May 8 public hearing, which will allow taxpayers to calculate approximately how much in school taxes they would owe. These will be subject to change, though, because final assessment rolls are not filed until the summer.

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Some cuts

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SLCSD Superintendent Diane Fox said the budget took a lot of work this year with the end of pandemic money.

“Like all good things, the end is here,” she said. “Once you have it, you can never live without it.”

Fox said one additional academic interventionist at Bloomingdale Elementary and several part-time interventionists will not continue, because their positions were pandemic aid-dependent. She said Bloomingdale will still have a full-time interventionist. This person also did special education this year, but next year they’ll return to focusing on intervention and the district will hire for a part-time special education position.

Fox also said a technology class at the elementary schools with a teacher who returned from retirement will not continue.

Fox said they knew this money was ending and tried to stretch its benefit. She said they made a plan to ease off COVID money over a couple years, to delay layoffs, adding that it could allow them to make reductions through attrition in the future, instead of layoffs.

Last year, the district shifted some non-instructional staff salaries into COVID funding, allowing the savings on their general fund to roll into unassigned fund balance which will be spent this year. The unassigned fund balance rolls over unspent money from year-to-year.

In this coming budget year, these salaries are moving back into the general budget as COVID funding ends.

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Fund balance

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The spending plan calls for the district to pull $2.37 million from its unassigned fund balance to balance the budget, approximately the same amount as it pulled last year. That balance currently has $5 million in it, 13.4% of the total budget.

The state recommends districts only keep 4% in unassigned fund balance, but it is common practice for districts to hold more than that to be prepared for emergencies or reductions in state aid.

Fox said when she started as superintendent, the district had a negative $700,000 fund balance.

“We owed ourselves money,” she said.

The district built it up over the years.

“We have saved this money for a rainy day. And it’s raining,” Fox said.

She said with pandemic aid drying up, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to eliminate the save harmless provision next year, the district will need to dip into its fund balance to give them time to adjust.

“That’s what we saved it for,” Fox said. “With budgets in New York state, this is what happens with budgets in schools. There’s periods where you have good state funding and periods where you don’t.”

Fox said the district should be able to roll over $1 million from this budget to put into the budget they develop next year.

The state’s “save harmless” provision could be eliminated next year if Hochul pushes for the state to rewrite its foundation aid formula.

The provision currently ensures that districts don’t have a decrease in state foundation aid from year-to-year. But Hochul proposed changes to the foundation aid formula as part of her executive budget proposal, which would’ve effectively eliminate that provision.

SLCSD would have seen an estimated $1,469,668 reduction in state aid this year if it happened.

The statewide NYSUT teachers union held off Hochul’s planned save harmless elimination and the state budget passed Saturday with save harmless saved.

But Hochul has warned that it is on the chopping block next year.

“The shot’s been fired across the bow,” Fox said. “It would be silly to see that that’s what’s coming on the horizon and not plan for that.”

The idea behind eliminating save harmless is that districts are holding too much money in their fund balances, collecting money from taxpayers that is saved for future years instead of being spent in the year they are collected.

“They’re saying schools that are on save harmless are already collecting too much money,” Fox said, “(Hochul) knows all of us are sitting with unassigned fund balance that’s well over 4%. There’s money there that she wants to use.”

“So they’re balancing New York state’s budget on fund balance,” SLCSD board member Joe Henderson said.

SLCSD board member Tori Thurston said in meetings she’s attended about foundation aid with the governor’s office, she felt Hochul’s office is “dismissive” of their concerns.

The SLCSD school board election, proposition and budget vote will take place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on May 21 in the district offices near the auditorium at door No. 5 of the High School at 79 Canaras Ave.