The evening of 2025-05-13 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
The Budget Public Hearing had a good summary slide. It highlights the most critical numbers. Namely total budget of $64,732,896, levy increase of 3.01%, which, yes, is within the tax cap.
(image shamelessly stolen from the budget presentation)
After that was the ‘Meet the Candidates’ event. Full disclosure: I am one of the candidates. As such, I won’t offer any opinion on that section of the meeting. Just point out there is a video available. If you are interested…
At which point there was a short break. I think this was because we were ahead of schedule, and there was a desire to start the regular meeting at 7PM. Either way, a chance to stretch legs and chat was appreciated.
A group of people were at the meeting to comment on the wrestling program. In particular, that the coach was recently removed. This appears to have upset the parents of the team. Which was a different reason to have a crowd at the budget hearing, but at least they had a chance to be heard.
Capital project continues along. There was a change order about asbestos removal as part of the project. And, of course, there were a bunch of pictures at the back of the report.
And there was a discussion about Verizon locating a cellphone tower on school property. In particular, the Papermill street property.
This felt like a sales pitch, which I suppose it was. When questions were answered, it felt like the first part of the answer was about how this will be great for the school (or similar comments), before the question itself was answered. Not a criticism of Verizon, as that is there job. But as ‘new’ Dave pointed out, the Board should look to a third party for some of these answers. Due diligence demands not trusting the salesman for all answers.
The possibility of using the light poles on the sports fields was asked about. But it sounded like those poles are too short.
The question of radiation from the tower was raised. Answer was the cellphone in your hand produces more radiation, especially when coverage is poor. Which make sense, but was also the point that got ‘new’ Dave to bring up looking for a neutral third party.
My sense was this discussion was primarily for the Board to either outright reject the idea, or give some general guidance on what more they wanted to see. The Board seemed in favor of continuing to explore the idea, possibly because it would be an additional revenue source.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 13, 2025 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page. While a recording is also available.