The Fayetteville Manlius school district will be going back to the polls after a record turnout for a recent proposal for the high school football field turf, which would have cost the taxpayers $4.6 million, and was voted down by a nearly 65 % margin. Historically the FM school budget vote has only received a 10% voter turnout. Many speculate that this may be due to lack of information out there.
Members of the FM school district have received a brief summary of the proposed budget, but in order to gain access to the full budget, they are forced to go the District office to request one. I did do this, and after jumping through some hoops, was able to acquire the full copy which breaks down more thoroughly how the proposed funds would be distributed.
The current standing budget for the FM school district is $69,121,000, versus the newly proposed 72,108,780, a total increase of 1.04% in the budget. They will also be voting on three propositions which have had little to no exposure, leaving taxpayers to find out their own information regarding these propositions. Even the FM school district website gives no information or warning of these proposed propositions; they merely state that the school budget vote will be on Tuesday, May 20 at Fayetteville Elementary School from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The largest percentage of increase in the proposed budget will be going towards what the school board is labeling “capital component”. This, according to their pamphlet, entails “district-wide maintenance, grounds and custodial labor and benefits, support equipment, utilities, debt services, and capital transfer funds for the small capital projects. The capital transfer funds include monies which will be used for building and/or reconstruction of projects of immediate need in any or all of our district buildings. Authorization for use of $625,000 for these projects within our buildings would occur with voter approval of this budget.”
Over 10% of the proposed budget funds will go toward debt services, which include principal and interest payments on items that the school district has previously bought with outstanding bonds.
If the school budget is voted down, the school board will be given two options. First, they can attempt to amend the current proposed budget and send it back to another vote. Secondly, they can allow the contingency budget of $71,988,750 to be placed into effect. The contingency budget would decrease funding to both the program funds for school activities and educational instruction and also decrease the funds available for maintenance and debt services, but it will NOT decrease the administrative funds, which are used to pay the Board of Education, District Office and other administrator operations. This makes it appear that the School Board is biased, willing to decrease true educational needs while protecting their own paychecks.
FM residents have hopefully paid close attention to these types of details for tomorrows vote. When I asked the District office why they did not put a full budget on the district website, giving people the ability to see all that is entailed in the budget they said, “We never considered that a need or something that should be done.”
This response shows to me that the school district is hoping you place your vote blindly, unaware of what exactly you are voting for, which will make FM residents vote either for or against the proposed property tax increase in an already highly taxed community.
We can only hope that the School Board begins to believe more in its residents in the future instead of providing Fayetteville-Manlius residents with such a broad stroke budget proposal in the future.
