Patterson's New Budget
ee
yesterday,1/19/2010.
http://wcbstv.com/local/state.budget.paterson.2.1435232.html
Here is a snippet from the article:
"That said, the governor's new budget has $1 billion in new taxes and
nearly $800 million in cuts for New York City.
The words certainly sounded good.
"Our revenues have crumbled and our budget has crashed and we can no
longer afford this spending addiction that we have had for so long,"
Paterson said.
And with those words Paterson announced a new $134 billion budget that
will please no one except the numbers-crunchers.
School aid will be slashed by $1 billion. Health care will be slashed
by another billion. Aid to NYC is about to get harpooned. "
The school aid cut was not described as to whether it will be
operational or building aid. The point I would like to make is that
it does not matter. The more in cuts from the state means only one
thing to our district. It means that the district taxpayers will have
to take on more of a burden just to keep the current system going. We
can expect that next years School tax increases could be on the order
of 8-10%!!! These opetational tax increases have NOTHING to do with
the MS renovation. When they kick in a few years, you could be seeing
an overall increase of 25% from this years tax bill! Is that
something you can afford? Anyone?
Yes, we can agree that our kids deserve the best but without
increasing our tax base, this town and school district cannot think
of taking on an additional $77 Million in debt.
Some say that the $77 Million is not an honest representation of the
debt. I have one question to ask those people. When the School
District takes on the bond, is it not their name on the loan? In
other words, if all else fails, who will the lenders come after for
the repayment?
This is not the time for this project. Repair what is necessary with
the reserves in hand.