Tonight (2017-04-11) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
The big topic of the night was next years school budget, and the board approved a budget to send to the voters. The public hearing on the budget will be May 9th, at 7PM. Considering past years, most likely in the High School cafeteria. The budget vote will be on May 16th, at the High School Lobby (just outside the pool). Also that day is Cougar’s Creations, and they usually have a BBQ outside.
The proposed budget has a 1.95% tax rate increase. Other numbers were thrown around, for a variety of reasons, but all I personally care about is what the rate is going to be. This increase will generate approximately $530,000 in taxes.
It’s worth mentioning that your actual rate will be something different. 1.95% is the average, but each of the 9 towns in the district have it adjusted by a whole other system. Dazed and confused as part of policy?
There was also discussion about the retirement system, both the employee and teacher. In particular, how the school has a reserve (ie savings account) for Employee Retirement System (ERS) but not for Teacher Retirement System (TRS). This is due to state law, which says you can’t save for teachers. To misquote a comment made, this means that if there was a crisis the school would “have to cut staff to pay for retirement plans”.
This is just part of why I think public employees should not have a retirement program. It adds too much other insanity with it. Pay them a decent wage and let them worry about their own retirement. After all, they are adults and can handle it.
While on the topic of things done poorly by government, at the comment time of the meeting I told the board they shouldn’t take out debt to pay for anything. Public Debt (as opposed to private debt) is in essence today’s elected officials asking today’s taxpayers to force tomorrow’s elected officials to force tomorrow’s taxpayers to pay for today’s expenses. Breaks the premise of “No taxation without Representation”, as those paying the taxes were not represented by those that committed to having the payments made. It’s your parents making you pay for a party they had (without you), last year.
The debt issue came up as part of the school bus discussion. The school’s plan is to pay for next years buses with cash, not debt. But due to the way the law is written, they have to ask for permission to take out debt. They don’t have to take out the debt, just ask for it in case something goes wrong.
Paying for things with cash, good. ‘Paying’ with debt, bad. Doubly bad if taxes are how the debt is paid off.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the April 11th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.