Council Cuts $125,000 from Board of Ed Budget

The East Hampton Town Council finalized the 2012-13 budget at its meeting on Tuesday night, trimming an additional $125,000, all of which will come from the board of education budget.

The budget will now go to a town meeting on Monday, 7 p.m., at the town hall meeting room.

As a result of the cut, the projected mill rate is 26.28, a .60 increase.

The budget calls for $38,694,730 in overall spending, an increase of $930,430 or 2.46 percent.

Under the proposed budget, which will need to be approved by residents by referendum on May 8, the board of education will get $26,938,340, an increase of $726,338 or 2.77 percent.

The board of finance had previously cut $175,000 from education. Where the cuts to education are made are controlled by the board of ed.

Town Council Chair Sue Weintraub said East Hampton has become a very desirable place to live and part of that is because of the excellent education system, but the school district has “not been able to correlate spending more money to get better education.”

Weintraub pointed out that the education budget in 2003-04 was $18,740,257, nearly $9 million less than was originally asked for this fiscal year. She then requested the council cut an additional $125,000 from the board of education budget.

“We just can’t continue to sustain this,” she said. “I know the state, our Governor, is working on trying to put some policies in place to assist. I’m concerned that we need to start making some hard decisions now.”

Let Patch save you time. Get great local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone every day with our free newsletter. Simple, fast sign-up here.

Council member Kyle Dostaler said there are many good things about the budget and the additional cut will help get it passed.

Ted Hintz agreed with the cut but took issue with the town engineer position being included.

“There’s a lot of things coming down,“ Hintz said. “I would hate to hire a position that may not be the necessary first step. Until we get our new town manager in place, we look at what the master plan is, what positions are needed to move the town forward. I really would support removing that position for the time being.”

The board of finance, which  considered cutting the town engineer from the budget, compromised by cutting the position in half, requiring the full-time hiring not take place until the second half of the year.

Dostaler supported keeping the town engineer, saying that ultimately it will save the town money.

“Having the town engineer, as opposed to outsourcing all the costs for the town engineer services, the town will have an increase of 543 hours the first year that person is hired,” he said. “That person can do a lot more for our dollar that we’re already spending.”

No other cuts were considered during the discussion, though the frustration that so few residents provided input during the budget meetings was again expressed. Whether this budget will meet with voter approval is anybody’s guess.

“In a perfect world we would have no mill rate increase, but we’re not going to get that. So the less there is, the better it is,” Council Vice Chair Glenn Suprono said. “People in this town and people in this state and people in this country are still in pain. We don’t have what we had five years ago.”

Added Weintraub: “I am concerned about the taxes going up and up and up. I just think we do need to make some difficult decisions.”

The motion to cut the board of education budget by $125,000 passed, 5-2.

Why not follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook?