The Mt. Sinai School District tried piercing the tax levy cap in order to keep its current program, but the , which means cuts to the program are likely.
"Obviously everybody’s disappointed, we’ve got to go through it again and spend some money," Superintendent Anthony Bonasera said. "The law is the law, 55 percent of the people voted on the budget and that was no longer the majority. That’s what we’re dealing with."
At previous budget presentations, the district , and now that the district must present a budget at the cap, Bonasera said residents should expect those cuts to be made.
"I would expect everything we spoke to the public about during our budget forums and workshops, I would expect those programs to be gone," he said. "Our budget only went up eight-tenths of a percent, the thing that killed us was on the revenue side, which we really have no control over."
Let Patch save you time. Get great local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone everyday with our free newsletter. Simple, fast sign-up here.
Mt. Sinai lost approximately four million dollars in state aid and assessment levy, according to Bonasera, and the district turned to piercing the cap in order to keep the current program.
"The board's postions was, we will give you an opportunity to vote on the existing program, which in order to fund it we had to pierce the cap...and the community spoke," Bonasera said. "We had almost 2,400 votes, probably 1,000 more voters than we’ve had in prior elections, of that 968 of them were parents of kids in school."
Bonasera points to the older demographic of the community and a lack of voting from the younger residents as another reason the budget did not garner the support it needed in order to pass.
"The younger people aren’t voting," he said. "I don’t know if it’s a situation where they think it’s going to pass or they’re saying 'my vote doesn’t count', but their vote does count."
The Board of Education and administration will hold an executive session on May 22 to discuss particulars of the new budget. A public board meeting is scheduled for June 13, a week before the budget re-vote on June 19. Bonasera said it is possible there will be another public session beforehand, but nothing has been decided yet.
