By Joseph D’Andrea
The Mineola Board of Education gave a promising budget update on Thursday, presenting information about what is expected to be adopted in April, the progress of capital projects and how several aspects of the budget compare to that of past years.
The tentative 2023-2024 spending plan is $109.7 million, which represents a 0.32% decrease from last year.
Andrew Casale, assistant superintendent for business and operations reported the decrease is mostly related to a smaller transfer to capital.
The tax levy in the tentative budget is $85.5 million, which is a 1% increase and falls below the maximum tax levy increase of 1.74%
Revenues show an increase for next year, “especially with our interest earnings by investing in New York Class,” which amounts to $391,000 since the end of November. Mineola’s five-year average was highlighted as optimistic during the presentation compared to Nassau County’s five-year average of “a conservative” 1.91%.
“[Mineola’s] at 1%, with a five-year average of 1.09%,” said Casale. “You can see a sharp difference there, and it’s impressive, I think.” He went on to say that the averages will decrease in all probability as the tightening of budgets before adoption will most likely occur.
Mineola’s budgets over the last decade was featured in the presentation, showing a 10-year average of 1.11% for the educational plan and budget, which was stated to be “fifth lowest in the county.”
Superintendent Michael Nagler said this can be directly attributed to the closing of two schools in the district 14 years ago and “reinvesting the money back into the school system… we have very flat numbers and we do a ton of capital work. Prior to that, we didn’t do anything.”
Speaking on state aid, Casale said “Not much has changed in the last two weeks with state aid, which is a good thing because as I reported last time, we had lost $181,000 overnight. So we’re holding strong with our state aid and I don’t anticipate any major changes from now until the adoption, which we’re scheduled to do on April 4 when the governor hopefully releases her budget on time.”
“The set-aside is in our state aid number and projections right now,” he continued. “Either way, we’re getting that state aid, it’s just whether that restriction stays in place or not. But again, we got a nice increase in state aid at $2.7 million, which does not include pre-K since that’s not general fund money.”
At this time, the board has about $8.5 million in the budget for capital projects. It is hoped Mineola’s current middle school project will be completed for $8 million instead of the previous estimate of $8.5 million, in which the remaining $500,000 would be used for the Synergy Cafe and parking lot project, which began on March 17.
Casale spoke on the board’s intentions to alter their approach.
“We hope that this $8 million that we have set aside—we have to think like this now because the prices have gone up so much—is enough for Phase One, so we need to set aside this [$2.5 million] to continue moving forward with this middle school project,” he said.
We’re trying to come up with a way to do the foundation work as early as this summer, and then we’d be able to completely change how we bid the project for hopefully a Thanksgiving opening bid or start date,” he continued.
Nagler expanded on this.
“Hopefully, [the plan] is cost-effective, but it buys us more time to make interest, which we’ve been doing very well on, and it moves us in the right direction to get at least the foundation work done,” he said.
Nagler said he plans on rebidding the project which will include the cafeteria, kitchen and gym and reminded the public that there’s a third phase that will see even more work done throughout the building.
Also noted was a significant increase in health and dental benefits, the total salary and the total benefits “buckets” up over 5%.
“I don’t anticipate any major changes once again,” Casale said. “We hope that the governor adopts on time, and if not, I still think that we’re going to adopt on April 4 because we’re in a really good spot and don’t see anything moving that drastically.”