Vernsey Issues School Budget Caution

Superintendent Timothy M. Vernsey told the city school district's board of education Monday evening not to expect him to pull any rabbits out of his hat this budget-building season.

"The governor proposed an $800 million increase in state aid, which for us means an increase of $369,000. But, with the loss of the federal jobs bill, or approximately $317,000, it works out to an actual increase of around $52,000. Not good. It puts us in a pretty serious predicament," Mr. Vernsey said.

Projected increases to the Ogdensburg City School District budget for 2012-2013, according to a graph distributed by Mr. Vernsey, include $907,000 in wages, $580,000 in health insurance, $247,000 in the teacher's retirement system, $71,000 in the employee's retirement system, $64,000 in social security, and $245,000 in all other expenses. The total increase anticipated in expenses is $2,114,000.

Along with the $369,000 increase in state aid, other anticipated increases in revenue, Mr. Vernsey said, include $175,000 in property taxes and $100,000 in all other revenue, for a total increase of $644,000. This leaves the district with about a $1.5 million deficit to fill, already assuming an appropriation of $1.8 million from the district fund balance, Mr. Vernsey said.

"We're going to have to be very creative. I don't want anyone to think I have any other rabbits to pull out of a hat on this one," he said. "Any cuts to staffing will impact student programming one way or another."

Over the past four years, Mr. Vernsey said, 44 positions have been cut either through attrition or layoff.

"It's common sense to assume that with the elimination of 15 percent of your work force, you're pretty close to reaching the point where you can't do it again," he said. "We're going to have to look at the major cost drivers on that list of projected expense increases. The problem is, our sources of revenue are not enough even to cover ERS, TRS and social security."

Mr. Vernsey said there is only one area - wages - where he can look at cuts.

"I'll be enlisting the support of our union reps to handle this level of deficit," he said. "There is no way that I won't ask the board for another healthy allocation of fund balance."

Following the not so promising introduction, the board discussed several portions of its upcoming budget, including the elementary department, library, and special education.

"We've attempted, for the past several years, to keep these at 0.0 percent changes," said Asst. Superintendent David J. Valois of the elementary school budgets.

All four elementary schools were able to achieve this goal under the proposed 2012-2013 budget, with Kennedy Elementary's total budget remaining at $37,000, Madill's at $34,500, Lincoln's at $11,250, and Sherman's at $7,500.

"I appreciate all the hard work from our elementary principals. I don't know how many years they can keep doing it," Mr. Vernsey said of Susan A. Jacobs (Kennedy), Debora M. Hannan (Madill), and Paula B. Scott (Lincoln/Sherman).

The library budget is slated to increase $54,153, or 17 percent, from $318,117 adopted in the 2011-2012 budget, to $372,270 proposed for 2012-2013.

The special education budget will also see an increase, from $3,911,262 adopted for the current school year, to $4,146,000 proposed for next, an increase of 6 percent.