060603 Voters reject $78.28-million school budget school budget

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060603 Voters reject $78.28-mil^lionschool budget school budget

By FELIX CARROLL

Adding yet another exclamation point to the hotly charged, polarized environment within the KatonahLewisboro School District, voters on Tuesday rejected a $78.28-million spending plan to run the schools next year. Katonah-Lewisboro was one of only two districts out of 19 in northern Westchester and Putnam counties that panned their proposed budgets.

"The board should reflect its constituents who have just expressed their opinions, and the constituents include those with kids in the schools and those without kids in the schools," said Spencer Dvorkin of Katonah, who helped lead an opposition group whose late-minute mailing has been criticized as inaccurate by school board supporters.

He said he didn't disagree so much with the proposed budget as he did with the way the district is run. "People voted against the astounding arrogance of the school administration," said Mr. Dvorkin, a former school board member, "starting from the top and going almost all the way down."

Two other propositions also failed

- one for facility maintenance and repairs, and the other to purchase 12 new school buses.

In the school board election Donald Scott of Katonah, the board president, beat Karen Conti of Lewisboro by a vote of 1,980 to 1,346.

Robert Meyer of Lewisboro beat Peter Breslin by a vote of 2,003 to 1,604. Both men are from Lewisboro and were seeking the seat being vacated by Judith Collins-Turi, also of Lewisboro. Mr. Meyer was endorsed by the group Citizens for Prudent School Planning (CPSP), which mailed out a flyer to district voters on Saturday urging people to vote "no" on the budget.

And a majority did.

In all, out of the four voting districts, only a majority of voters within the Katonah Elementary School area endorsed the spending plan, which would have meant an increase of $5.77 million, or 7.97 percent, over the current budget. The budget would have increased taxes 9.45 percent in Bedford, 5.04 percent in Lewisboro, 9.66 percent in North Salem, and 8.42 percent in Pound

Ridge.

The budget was defeated in a vote of 2,224 to 2,056. About 45 percent of district voters turned out - a high turnout by Katonah-Lewisboro standards.

Voters, by a vote of 2,203 to 2,040, also defeated a proposition to borrow $838,000 for the purchase of four buses, one wheelchair van and seven vans. The purchases would not have had an impact on taxes until 200405, 05, when the cost would have been 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

By a margin of 2,111 to 2,129, a proposition requesting $1.25 million to be borrowed for facility maintenance and repairs was also defeated. The tax impact beginning in 2004-05 would have been 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

The school board now must decide what its next move is. It's likely the board will opt to present another, scaled-down budget to voters in July. If that fails, the board would then be forced to adopt an austerity budget.

If that happened, said Superintendent of Schools Robert Lichtenfeld, elementary and middle school and many high school class sizes would be increased to the contractual maximum; some high school electives would be eliminated, as would the elementary enrichment program, kindergarten teaching assistants, library support staff, and two administrative interns; the athletic program would be reduced and the middle school modified sports program would be eliminated entirely; high school club and afterschool activities would be reduced; and

there would be reduced school supplies and no equipment purchases.

`Damaging' to district

"I think this is damaging," Dr. Lichtenfeld said Tuesday night after the returns came in. "I think when a community develops a reputation for turning school budgets down, it's going to eventually hurt property values."

The budget defeat comes at a time when many Katonah-Lewisboro voters have shown a propensity for rejecting district spending plans.

Last fall, voters resoundingly defeated a plan to purchase 8.8 acres in Cross River that KatonahLewisboro School District officials hoped to turn into athletic fields. In January 2002, voters also resoundingly rejected a $50-million spending plan for school upgrades and additions designed to deal with school overcrowding. That proposal was then scaled down to $28.3 million and was approved a year ago by a margin of 18 votes.

School supporters this week were enraged by CPSP's mailing, which began with the banner headline, "Here we go again, more soaring school taxes."

"People read it, and we have no way of responding to it," said Dr. Lichtenfeld.

"It's not like we have a dialogue about the issues when they send this stuff out at the last minute," said school board member Donna Walsh of Katonah.

"They don't want to portray them in public because they don't want their ideas to be tested," Dr. Lichtenfeld said.

"Unfortunately, because of an organization called CPSP, which sends out misinformation and lies, our kids have to suffer," said Shari Aaron of Katonah. "This is a group that's out to get the district, and out to bring it down."

When he was asked by The Record-Review this week about one particularly glaring inaccuracy in the flier, Jeffrey Vreeland of Lewisboro, who spearheaded the CPSP mailing, admitted he made an error.

Instead of costing the district $7,500 for each high school student to "sleep an extra 20 minutes," as the flier states in its push for the district to return to triple-tripping, it costs the district $750.

"Now that could be an error," Mr. Vreeland said in a phone interview on Wednesday. "If that's an error I will retract it because I thought I rechecked that a couple times. ... You're right. I apologize. That's an error. That was not intentional."

The flier, said Mr. Scott, "spread the kind of distorted information that can cause a budget to fail. We have close votes here. Everything matters."

Asked what his goal was, Mr. Vreeland said, "It certainly wasn't my intent or our intent to drive the schools into the rocky shores of an austerity budget. But I think with this defeat we've created a creative tension, which gives us an opportunity for consensus and dialogue.

"We also have two competing towns in a sense, because Katonah approved the budget by 55 percent, and Lewisboro defeated the budget by 55 percent. The trouble is, Lewisboro's bigger than Katonah; so, sorry, guys.

"People moved to Lewisboro when it was a lot more affordable and the schools were a lot more reasonable," he said, "and this became their community, and they want to stay here."

How can the rift in the district be resolved?

"I would be more than happy to come out in favor of a new budget, OK, if they would at least make a concession on the busing," Mr. Vreeland said.

By that, he means having the district return to triple-tripping, in which the high school, middle school and elementary schools all start and end in successive time periods, which means bus drivers make three round trips a day. Since 1999, as the result of an overwhelming endorsement by voters, the district instituted double-tripping, which meant the high school and middle school started at the same time - for the high school, that meant 20 minutes later than before. Under that policy, more buses and drivers had to be hired.

Mr. Vreeland contends the district could save $1 million if it re-instituted triple-tripping. School officials say the savings would amount to $500,000.

Eve Hundt of Katonah mentioned the number of signs this past week in the community that read: "Vote No to Higher Taxes."

"I don't see any signs that say `Get Rid of the Police,' or `Don't Support Hospitals' or `Don't Plow the Roads' ... People are taking their frustrations out on the schools because it's the only budget they get to vote on," she said.