ONE OPINION: A QUALIFIED “YES” ON THE BUDGET

I will vote for this year’s budget because I want to support a Board that is presenting the lowest budget increase in recent memory. My support is qualified because I’m disappointed that last-minute stimulus funding was used to restore spending that originally had been cut from the budget. That sent the wrong message.

That said, the Board and the Superintendent are headed in the right direction, but they need to go further next year.  I challenge them to declare budget reduction targets for next year, right now. I suggest a 5% decrease. There is a full year to get creative, make our dollars go further, achieve economies of scale through quad-village cooperation, and make thoughtful cuts.

Going forward, budget discussions need to better consider the entire community, including our seniors. The opportunity cost of escalating budgets is that many Hastings residents are being priced out of their own homes and voting with their feet. Next year more of these underrepresented citizens will be voting at the polls.

I encourage the Board and the community to begin now to forge a consensus around a budget that the community can afford. This community supports our schools, but not at any price.

–Posted by Jane Cody

Comments reflect the personal opinion of the poster

HOW THE DOLLARS TRICKLE OUT

Yesterday afternoon’s “Your Schools” newsletter arrived full of praise for the newly adopted 2009–2010 school budget and its architects’ hard work (even having attended most of the budget meetings, the curmudgeon in me thinks “yeah, right…”). The New and Old Business section of the May 5 board meeting yielded a glimpse of how the spending actually happens.

Preliminary Survey Results-April 14th

Our thanks to the 179 responders to the Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes survey. Many of them took the time to add comments, which we are tallying and analyzing and will present to you shortly. Since we’re still collecting survey responses, we won’t release all results until everyone has had a chance to be heard. In the interim, here are the five most salient points thus far:
* 83.4% support collaboration among the quad village school districts to reduce costs and improve programs
* 90% say property taxes are either “a little high” or “excessively high”
* 66.1% do not support salary increases for school employees, 9.9% support them, 14% are not sure
* 68% said tax rates negatively affect the character or Hastings, 20.7% are not sure, 5.9% were positive, 5.3% said taxes had no effect
* 91.2% plan to vote on this year’s school budget
posted by Marlene Piturro

Join the Conversation About Our Taxes

The Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes was convened by Jane Cody, Naseem Jamali and Marlene Piturro. We hope all interested Hastings residents will join the conversation.

• Bookmark this page. We will be posting information and hosting a community conversation here.
• Send an email to hastingstaxes@gmail.com with the word subscribe in the subject line to receive email updates from the Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes.
• Take a look at the budget proposal on the Board of Education’s website: http://www.hastings.k12.ny.us/board_of_ed1.htm
• Take a look at the village of Hasting’s budget

  http://village.hastings.ny.us