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GREENBURGH, N.Y. – After months of number crunching and weeks of community outreach, Greenburgh Central 7 School District administrators will learn Tuesday how voters will respond.
The district’s proposed $58.6 million budget, a plan that administrators have said repeatedly has been “cut to the bone,” will be on the ballot Tuesday.
Superintendent Ronald Ross said he is confident the budget will be approved by the community.
“I do think the citizens of Greenburgh will pass the budget,” he said. “We have represented a bare-bones budget. I think they want excellence in the future and they will commit to that.”
The budget has a slight spending increase over this year’s budget and does not cut any staff or after-school programs.
The district’s Business Department has said the plan would raise the tax levy by 2.54 percent, enough to keep it below the state's formula-determined tax cap. However, administrators said they were uncertain what the budget's effect on the property tax rate would be.
If the budget were to be rejected by voters, which happened last year, the district would be forced into an austerity budget, which would mean cutting $1.2 million from the plan.
Administrators have called that the worst-case scenario.
“We’re committed to bringing excellence to the school district, but that costs money,” Ross said. “There is no way around that. We can’t have excellence with an austerity budget.”
Meanwhile, voters will also choose from a pool of 10 candidates for three Board of Education positions Tuesday.
The three current board members whose terms are set to expire, President Terry Williams and Trustees Cora Carey and Charles Bronz, are all seeking re-election.
They face seven challengers: Susan Penchansky, Eric Bitterman, Sonja Brown, Milena Din, Jacqueline Hoeger, Min Hong and Amy Huang.
The poll at the Woodlands High School gymnasium will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Comments (5)
We should NOT pass the budget. The budget increases do not bring anything "for the children" but only to the teachers and administrators! Increasing and dumping volumes of money into a broken system won't help. It needs to be reformed. Its madness and its got to stop!
You are misinformed about our budget. Please review it online at our district website instead of making inflammatory statements.
When the BOE decides to not play games with the budget and decides to not misrepresent it to public, and makes every effort to make it more efficient and decides to make clear that they will move forward and combine/close some plants, that's when I'll consider voting for it. Stop the "for the children" nonesense. GC7 ranks as one of the highest spend per student, anywhere. The poor performance is not related to a lack of funds. It's poor management all around. I'm sick of throwing good money after bad. It really doesn't matter anyway, will will get a tax increase if they go to the austerity budget.
Tootired, our school budget is online, and the budget is transparent. You, anyone, can go through it line by line. Voting for the budget IS voting for our children's education. I understand if you don't have kids in the district that you may not see the immediate benefit from voting for the budget. However, as you said, taxes will rise anyway. Why not let my kids have the resources necessary to support programs like fencing, a support program for gifted kids (which was cut w/ our austerity budget) and after school bussing?? Whatever "issue" you have with the board or admin, come to the BOE meetings and fuss about it in public, but don't vote down the budget and come online to complain about it.
I agree that some things can change but I wouldn't punish the families/kids that believe in this countrys public education system. I'm sorry to hear that you choose to do that.
The budget will pass. We must provide funding to educate our children.