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School Funding in NYS is Real Tax Battlefront
To the Editor:
Shortly, I will go to Haldane to vote on the school budget. I will vote for it because I believe that supporting Haldane benefits not only the students, but the town as a whole. I also believe that some sacrifice is a reasonable request for a community to make of its residents. I am not, however, pleased with the only two options made available by the school board and school district. I am also not pleased with the guiltbased tenor of all communications; vote for the budget or else!
I must confess that in the past an increase in property taxes was affordable for my family. I thought that the complaints I heard and read about were just seasonal crabbing from people who just hadn't adjusted their mental cost-of-living index. As the years rolled by and the annual tax increase continued, I began to discern a pattern that is evident again this year. The school district prepares a budget and presents it to the board. The board chews on it for a few weeks, holds public meetings and asks reasonable questions about the cost of various items. Sometimes the projected increase is reduced but there is always an increase and the board signs off on it. Then the school board seemingly washes its hands of the matter and we receive mailings, telephone calls and read notices in PCNR citing the dire circumstances that will prevail if the budget fails and the contingency budget it put in place. During our 9 years in Cold Spring, the school budget has always passed but by a very small margin. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time now.
The annual " Well, this is the way it is and there isn't anything we can do about it, so we all have to pay up . . . and we don't like it either but if we don't we are failing our children" message from the school board and Haldane is no longer satisfactory. Saying "It's not our fault" is not an explanation. It's an excuse. Even paying increased taxes only maintains the status quo. So, what's to be done?
The issue is the school funding model in NY State, so this is where the battle must be joined. The school board must reach out to other school boards for mutual support, ideas and strategy. The PTA must do the same and all of us must reach out to our elected representatives to lobby for a school funding policy that does not rest so heavily on homeowners.
Michael Mell
Cold Spring
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