Town meeting vote on school budget is June 11

FALLS VILLAGE — Voters are asked to return to the Lee H. Kellogg school Thursday, June 11, 7 p.m. for a special town meeting to vote on the town’s spending plan.

The last-minute discovery of an error in the elementary school budget postponed the formal adoption of the spending plan at a town meeting Thursday, May 28.

At that meeting, Board of Education Chairman Andrea Downs asked that the Lee H. Kellogg school budget, the second item on the agenda, be withdrawn from consideration after the municipal budget had passed by unanimous voice vote.

Afterward, Downs said that a spreadsheet snafu had resulted in the exclusion of some $35,000 (in the salaries and benefits line) from the total.

She added that the final dollar amount would probably not be very different, as the board had some “harder numbers� for insurance costs to factor in as well.

On Monday, June 8, Downs said the school budget request rose about $17,000, slicing a percentage point off the decrease from this year’s budget, from 2.2 percent less to 1.2 percent less.

In addition to fixing the accounting software snafu, a few additional savings were realized in employee health insurance, in the library’s budget, in computer hardware and by ordering textbooks now and paying for them out of the current budget.

There will be an agenda item at Thursday’s meeting requesting an additional $27,000 for replacing the floor in the all-purpose room.

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