Tonight (2018-05-01) was the Public Budget Hearing and Meet the Candidates event for the Honeoye Falls-Lima School District.
For all the financial details you can see either this months ‘Inside HF-L‘ (in the mail or online), or last weeks presentation to the board (on BoardDocs). To summarize the high points: ~$50 million budget, with ~3% levy increase.
Each year I find it amusing how a 2% tax cap is never actually 2%. In this case it’s 3.22%. Apparently 3.22% is ‘close enough’ to 2% for Albany. For what it’s worth, this is not a complaint about not understanding math. I am noting the irony of a law being marketed as ‘capping tax increases at 2%’, when it actually ‘caps tax increase at a number that will never be 2%’.
Budget numbers aside, the candidates for Board of Education also has an opportunity to introduce themselves. Each year three positions are up for election. I was glad to see four candidates tonight, three incumbents and one new. The four candidates, in the order they should appear on the ballot: Joseph Alati, Carol Bellavia, Michael Shannon, and David Ghidiu.
David is the new person, everyone else is an incumbent, having served at least one term previously. I’ll probably vote for David simply because he’s not an incumbent. For whatever it’s worth, I did cross paths with him in a different setting a while back. Still, I’ve got two weeks to figure out my vote (as do you…).
I thought the four speeches were nice enough, but only one piece really stood out to me. Carol asked a rhetorical question using the buzz word of ‘Engage’, something about what the word means to you. I wanted to say ‘What Picard says to Data‘, but it really wasn’t the place for it.
The setting and audience might have been the most interesting part of this meeting. Previously, the Budget Hearing occurred directly before a normal Board of Education meeting. Often in the Cafeteria, but sometimes in the BoE room. Tonight was in the Chorus room (odd place), and not attached to a normal meeting (odd time). The time seemed to be linked to state laws on notification for public hearings, while the place seemed to be in anticipation of a large audience.
Nothing wrong with planning ahead, but notification shouldn’t be anything new (ie this could have happened at last weeks meeting). As for that audience? Apart from the usual suspects (ie school staff and myself), the only extra I noticed was a television camera crew. I’m reasonably sure they weren’t there for the budget, but for last weeks ‘excitement‘.
All in all, a pretty standard Public Budget Hearing. Gene (Superintendent) did agree with me, boring is how we like it. Excitement can be dangerous.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 1, 2018 Public Budget Hearing and Meet the Candidates event for the Honeoye Falls-Lima School District.