Pelham School Official: No Surprises in Tonight's Budget Presentation

Robert Eicher, the president of the Pelham school board, said there won’t be many surprises when schools Superintendent Dennis Lauro presents his budget proposal for the 2012-2013 tonight.

The $65.5 million proposal represents a 3.69 percent increase from this year’s budget. The tax levy would increase by 2.99 percent under Lauro’s proposal. Homeowners would pay $18.37 per $1,000 of assessed valuation using the 2011 assessment rolls, which represents an increase of about 6.2 percent from this year’s rate.

Commercial property owner would pay $24.14 per $1,000 of assessed valuation using the 2011 assessment rolls, which represents an increase of about 9.8 percent from this year’s rate.

This budget process has already been eventful, as district officials have been forced to consider a few controversial proposals in order to deal with the state’s 2 percent property tax cap. Those proposals included a plan to reconfigure the enrollment in the district’s elementary schools and a plan to change the high school’s schedule from 10 to 9 periods that is projected to save the district about $200,000.

“I think most of the presentation is going to go over topics that we’ve already discussed,” Eicher said. “We’ve already had a lot of discussion around the Princeton Plan and the elective issue in the high school. The Princeton Plan is not included in the proposal and we feel very comfortable that the changes proposed to the high school schedule won’t restrict too many students from taking the classes they want to take.”

Eicher said questions might come up during tonight’s presentation will be the amount of reserves that would be utilized in Lauro’s proposal.

Eicher said people might also be surprised by the amount of administrative cuts that have been proposed this year. But Eicher said the district is still under contract with labor units for that don’t expire until the next year or two.

“We need to come up with a strategy that will get us through the next two years,” Eicher said of future dealings with the district’s unions. “We’ll be talking pretty candidly about that during the next six weeks.”

Although the state didn’t provide school districts with pension relief from the tax cap, Eicher said the district was able to find relief by moving the its capitol expenditures out the operating budget. The district also managed to find some relief from the tax cap due to the fact that there was a growth in assessments.

The school board is scheduled to adopt a budget on April 16. District residents are scheduled to vote on the budget May. 15 inside the main high school gym.

The public session of tonight’s school board meeting is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. inside the Pelham Middle School library. PDFs of Lauro's budget proposal and the draft agenda for tonight's meeting can be found to the right of this story.