Before you vote today on your school district’s budget, take a look at Jerry Moore’s web site, My Short Pencil. While Jerry Moore focuses primarily on the Scotia-Glenville School District in Schenectady County, he has plenty of information that applies to all school districts.
I would especially recommend looking at his Budget Issues New York Capital District page, where you will find articles, letters to the editor and Mr. Moore’s commentary on several area school district budgets.
The Amsterdam Recorder has written an editorial saying that voters should approve the Greater Amsterdam School District budget, even though the budget calls for a 6.5% increase in spending. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I can’t provide a link to the Amsterdam Recorder editorial since the Amsterdam Recorder remains the only Mohawk Valley newspaper to charge a subscription to read their newspaper on-line. The newspaper doesn’t even have the sense to provide its editorials for free, but that is another story.
The Leader-Herald as usual presents a great editorial telling people to vote no on today’s school budget votes.
“Many local school district budgets for 2008-09 include tax-levy increases of between 2 percent and 4 percent. Those painful increases are bad enough, but two local districts have gone over the top with their proposed tax levies.
When voters in the Gloversville and Broadalbin-Perth districts go to the polls Tuesday, they’ll decide on school budgets containing 7 percent tax-levy increases.
Any property tax jump will be difficult for people who already are struggling with rising costs of fuel, food and other products, services, fees and taxes. The 7 percent increases are out of line and should be rejected.
Not that rejection will make much of a difference in Gloversville. If voters turn down the budget in that district, the school board likely would approve a contingency budget containing roughly the same levy increase.
Still, voters should cast their no votes, if only to send this message to state and local education officials: The state is forcing too many costly programs onto local schools, and school boards aren’t doing enough to reduce the spending they can control.”
