With a large proportion of the Mamaroneck School District’s budget already earmarked for mandated costs associated with current and retired employee’s salaries, the district may have less wiggle room for taxpayer funded budget increases in the wake of the new two percent tax cap law.

In order to comply with the new law, the district may have to make draconian choices with regard to school programs, said Mamaroneck District Superintendent Robert Shaps.

“In a tax cap world, salaries and benefits are increasing at a rate that will exceed the allowable tax levy limit and the use of reserves will not solve the problem,” he said. “Districts will be required to make choices about programs and delivery of education to remain under the cap or pass annual overrides.”

Next year, voters will have three major choices regarding the school budget. If it stays within the cap limit, all that’s required is a simple majority. The public can also pass a budget that exceeds the allowable cap limit by a 60 percent super majority, or, if neither of those options occurs, the budget defaults to a contingency levy that requires zero percent growth.

But several parts of the new law have yet to be clarified, said Meryl Rubinstein, assistant superintendent for business operations, including exemptions, financial formulas and carry over policies.

“Although the law has been passed, the implementation hasn’t been fully fleshed out by the state legislature and we need some guidance,” she said. “We’re waiting for them to clarify the interpretation.”

Some common misconceptions of what the law entails include the mistaken belief that individual taxes are capped at two percent or that the school budget will be capped at a two percent increase. What is capped, however, is the assessed tax levy across a given municipality.

Several audience members expressed concern as they realized that the well-intentioned law could have negative consequences.  Expenditures within the school system, particularly salaries, health insurance, pensions and health care for retirees, are expected to rise steadily, said Shaps, pointing to a graph to illustrate his point.

In the Mamaroneck School District, the tax levy covers 87 percent of the $109.1 million 2011-12 budget, with the remainder financed by sales tax, state aid, county sales tax and reserves. The budget has risen from $94 million in 2006-7 and reached $109.7 million during the 2010-11 fiscal year. The new law goes into effect for the 2012-13 through the 2016-17 fiscal year budget.

After the formal presentation, the assembly broke down into smaller groups to discuss the issue in further detail. One group benefited from the presence of three members of the district’s citizens advisory committee: Rod Reef, Jonathan Sacks and Mike Claiborne.

Reef suggested that if the district was unable to cover expenses and maintain its current level of quality through taxes, then perhaps efforts should be made to, “raise its own source of revenue, through buildings use, changed laws and possibly an alumni association to raise money.”

Others questioned why mandated expenses continue to rise.

In response, Sacks said that, in addition to rising costs for healthcare, the average district employee retires with an $111,000 annual pension including benefits, much of which is tax exempt.

Many cost-cutting measures considered or enacted, like trying to end the mandate that requires the district to pay for transporting private school students who live in the district to their schools, buying gas tax-free at the municipal yard or consolidating services through regional consortiums, have hardly put a dent in the budget.

“A lot of people can’t understand why school budgets keep rising,” said Claiborne. “This was a good way to share information with the community so that people can determine what drives the costs and maybe figure out what they can do about it.”

There will be Board of Education study session tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Mamaroneck High School library classroom to discuss district transportation services. If you are unable to attend the meeting, you can tune into LMC-TV Channel 76 Cablevision, 35 Verizon, for a live broadcast or on the LMC-TV website here 

Editor's Note: A previous version of this article indicated that the average district employee retired with a pension of $110,000 plus benefits; the $110,000 figure includes benefits. This has been corrected.