Nearby: South Country School Budget Fails

The South Country Central School District, which partially encompasses the East Patchogue and Bellport area, announced on its website that its 2013-2014 budget failed Tuesday night due to requiring a supermajority to pass.

The budget earned 1,538 approval votes to 1,307 votes, which was only 54.06 percent. According to Newsday, the vote needed a 60 percent approval to pass.

Also failing was a proposition for universal busing, which received 2,161 votes against to only 641 votes to approve. According to the May 16 issue of the Long Island Advance, the proposition would have provided busing for students regardless of the distance from their residence and the school they legally attended within the district at an estimated cost of $565,000, which the Advance says is roughly $60 in taxes for the average homeowner. The proposition also required a 60 percent approval, but it only received 22.88 percent.

A proposition to add a student ex-officio, non-voting Board of Education member however was approved, 1840 votes yes to 946 no.

In the "at-large" Board of Education race, candidates Carol Herrmann, Rocco DeVito and Julio Morales won the three seats. According to the Advance, Morales was an incumbent candidate as well as Marian McKenna and Owen Durney. Morales received the third-most votes at 1,146, which kept his seat. Herrmann earned the most votes with 1,363 and DeVito came in second with 1,232. McKenna came in fourth at 809 votes, and Durney came in seventh with 602. Other challenging candidates that did not earn a seat were Allison Stines, Lawrence Hoff, Gino Cruz and Timothy Brower. Herrmann, DeVito and Morales will start three-year terms on July 1.

Also according to the Advance, the proposed budget was $119 million, and if it passed, the owner of a home assessed the average valuation of $2,664 would have seen an increase of about $184 in taxes. Had the budget passed with the busing proposition, the total tax levy increase would have been four percent or roughly $240 extra in taxes per average homeowner.

According to a presentation PDF on South Country's website (Slide 5), the district's options are now to resubmit to public vote on June 18 the original budget, submit a revised budget or adopt a contingency budget that levies a tax no greater than the previous year. The presentation says that a contingency budget would be a zero percent increase in tax levy. According to another presentation PDF on their website (Slide 14), if the re-submitted or revised budget also fails, cuts would then range from a minimum of $4,274,003 to over $7 million, which represents fund balance application and reserve appropriations in addition to the permissible tax levy increase.

What are your thoughts on South Country Central School District's budget? Write about them in the comments section below.