{"id":8182,"date":"2013-05-21T21:57:34","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T01:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=8182"},"modified":"2013-05-22T07:49:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T11:49:21","slug":"voters-slap-down-school-budgets-that-exceed-property-tax-cap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/05\/21\/voters-slap-down-school-budgets-that-exceed-property-tax-cap\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters slap down four school budgets that bust prop tax cap"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Newcomb<\/a>

Newcomb Central School District cafeteria (NCPR file photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

Voters in the North Country sent a clear message to school districts that tried to exceed the state property tax cap.\u00a0 The answer was a resounding No.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of the region’s budgets came in under the cap and passed handily.<\/p>\n

But four of the region’s school systems — in General Brown, Minerva, Newcomb and Tupper Lake — asked voters to go beyond the roughly 4-5% hike allowed by state rules.<\/p>\n

In order to do so, those schools needed a 60% super-majority.<\/p>\n

But in two out of the three districts, Minerva and Tupper Lake, a clear majority of voters rejected the idea, according to reports in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a> and the Glens Falls Post Star.<\/a><\/p>\n

In Newcomb, meanwhile, a majority of voters approved the higher budget, but not by the margin required.<\/p>\n

At General Brown Central, where the district sought a 9.9 percent tax levy increase, WWNY-TV reports that a majority voted for the budget, but it fell short of the 60-percent needed to exceed the state tax cap.<\/span><\/p>\n

All four districts will now have to rework their budgets, cutting more dollars from programs, salaries and other costs.\u00a0 They are expected to put their revamped spending plans to a vote next month.<\/p>\n

Tuesday’s vote appeared to signal an unwillingness on the part of voters to accept substantial spending increases, even when district leaders made a strong argument that more dollars were desperately needed.<\/p>\n

Tupper Lake school superintendent Seth McGowan argued earlier this spring that the district faced a risk of insolvency.\u00a0 “We have plugged all the holes in the dam, battened down the hatches, and we have been under tremendous pressure. Now the levy just broke.”<\/p>\n

That view was echoed by Tupper Lake district board chair Dan Mansfield.<\/p>\n

“Now we’re at the point where we’re talking about surviving, actually surviving with a viable school that can graduate students and meets the minimum requirements by law,” Mansfield said in March.<\/p>\n

But in Tuesday’s vote, according to the Enterprise, Mansfield was voted out of office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voters in the North Country sent a clear message to school districts that tried to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[12055,6,20,5610],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8182"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182\/revisions\/8185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}