Category: Whitehall

According to this article in the Whitehall Times, the Whitehall school district will not increase taxes this coming school year. This was facilitated by the bad economy and Whitehall’s decline as a town which means falling enrollment for the foreseeable future. That’s the good news.

If you read the article though, the school district is still not being responsible with our tax dollars.

“The board will also ask voters to cast their ballots for a proposition to increase the capital project fund balance by $500,000 and raise the funds ceiling from $1.5 million to $3.5 million. “This is money that will be put aside for future capital projects,” said Watson. “The taxpayers would still have to vote on whether or not the money could be used to fund a project or not.”

In other words, instead of cutting the budget more and returning the money to the taxpayers as enrollment drops and Whitehall dies, they want to put the yearly budget overcharges in reserve accounts to fund future improvements … like a new gym. These are the games the Whitehall District has played for years.

Many will remember the $2.5 million dollar project that built a new addition and new tennis courts that was funded from reserve accounts in 2006. The superintendents of many school districts have been called out on this issue by local newspapers, because when they go to spend the money they claim it has no effect on taxes. When in fact, it has had an effect on taxes all along as they overcharge and over budget and put the excess in reserve accounts to pay for future expansion, which in Whitehall’s case, can’t even be justified with their projected enrollment figures. You never see tax cuts for this reason, because any excess gets “banked” only to be spent later.

The board could have simply returned this money to the taxpayers in the form of lower taxes but instead placed a new referendum on the ballot which they hope will pass. This will give them cover to stick their overcharges in reserve accounts for years to come.

Change!

Did you know that the Town of Dresden pays approximately 50% of the Whitehall school district’s budget, has around 5%-10% of the children in the school and yet has no representation on the Whitehall School District Board of Education? Look for yourself. What’s missing? Not one single member on the Board is from Dresden.

When I inquired a few years ago as to why Dresden was not proportionally represented, I was told the Board of Education (with no Dresden members) decided to make all seats at-large.

The problem with this is because Whitehall is so much bigger than Dresden, we will always be out-voted in a straight town by town contest.

This must change though. Two seats are up for election on the Board of Education on Tuesday, May 19th. We’ll have more on this in the weeks ahead.

We received the following letter from Legacy Banks (which has a branch office in Whitehall), where they state they will not participate in the federal TARP bailout.

“You may have read in the most recent edition of Your Legacy newsletter that we received preliminary approval to participate in the U.S. Treasury Capital Purchase Program (CPP), a component of the Troubled Asset Repurchase Program (TARP). Since the newsletter was printed and distributed, we have made the decision NOT to participate in this Program. Our approval was based on our financial strength and strong capital position, and it is for those same reasons that we have decided to decline federal funds.”

High Risk Sex Offender Moving to Whitehall This was in the Post Star. Please take note of the photograph in the article. This is for everyone’s protection.

Get Your Trees and Shrubs from the DEC

The DEC’s Saratoga Nursery produces over 50 species of trees and shrubs, many native to New York, for planting on public and private land. Read about how you can get seedlings for a variety of trees and shrubs. Please think about planting a tree this summer.

According to these figures, the Whitehall School District will get about 3.00% less state aid next year.

This is a little misleading because there was an 11.00% increase in aid from 2007-2008 to 2008-2009, so the difference between the 2007-2008 year (last year) and the 2009-2010 year (next year) is still an increase of about 7.5%.

What is amazing is that even with an increase of 11.00% in state aid last year the District increased taxes.

It is interesting to note that the names of the Whitehall School Board members are no longer listed on the Whitehall School District’s website. Are they in hiding? Could it be they don’t want to hear from the taxpayers?

We’ll have more for you in the weeks ahead.

Update – January 6, 2009 – 11:05 a.m.

We just noticed that the Board of Education Members are back on the website. I may have originally missed this but it’s good to know who our board members are. Click here for the list.

Note that there are no elected members with Dresden addresses.

Every wonder what the Whitehall train station looked like from the back of a train in winter?

So did someone else.

The commission on Property Tax Relief released their recommendations recently and they called for mandatory consolidation of all school districts with less than 1000 students.

You can read about it here (includes a link to the full report).

These recommendations have no force of law and are simply recommendations. The State Assembly and Senate would have to pass legislation and the Governor would have to sign it.

The problem is that most teacher union contracts require that all teachers keep their jobs in the event of a merger and the professional administrators who run most school districts have shown no ability to cut costs even though enrollment in north country schools is declining significantly. Our own State Senator, Betty Little, seems hesitant on consolidation.

The good news may be that the problem has grown so significantly that it cannot be ignored anymore.