Earlier this month, the Owego Apalachin Board of Education approved its proposed budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year. The budget will be $43,705,160, a 3.1 percent increase over the current year. Sixty percent of those increased expenditures are accounted for by increases in special education costs and debt service for the district’s ongoing capital projects, both of which are offset by corresponding increases in state aid.
The tax levy, under the proposed budget, will increase by 3.72 percent. Under the state’s property tax cap law, the district could have raised taxes as high as 5.32 percent, the OA tax levy limit under that law.
The average increase in the OA school property tax levy has been just 0.93 percent over the past six years.
Owego Apalachin will see some restoration of state aid under New York’s recently adopted budget. Foundation Aid, the basic school aid formula, will increase by $44,117, a 0.4 percent increase. A reduction in the Gap Elimination Adjustment (money withheld from schools in recent years to balance the state budget) of $1,077,524 amounts to a 65 percent restoration of those state aid funds. The district’s GEA still remains as a $580,178 reduction in state aid, however.
“The district will only have to use a small amount of its reserves to balance the budget,” said Dr. Bill Russell, OA superintendent, “ending the drain on savings triggered by the major reductions in state aid over the past six years.”
The proposed budget does not include cuts to staff or programs, which have been extensive in recent years.
The Owego Apalachin district will hold two public hearings on the proposed budget. The first will be at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, May 4, at the Apalachin Elementary School. The second will be at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 6, at the Owego Free Academy.
