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Southold School District proposes $30.6M budget for 2019-20

The Southold Union Free School District’s proposed 2019-2020 budget of $30.6 million will remain within the tax cap, administrators said.

The Assistant Superintendent for Business, Chuck Scheid, delivered a presentation to the board Wednesday night which reviewed the district’s sources of revenue and major budget drivers.

All programs, staff and services in the district will remain intact, Superintendent David Gamberg said in an email Friday.

The new budget is a 2.07 percent increase from last year’s budget of $29.9 million.

The majority of the budget, $15.6 million, will go toward employee salaries. Slightly over half of Mattituck-Cutchogue’s $40.7 million budget will go toward salaries and related costs, as previously reported in The Suffolk Times.

In Southold, $8.2 million will go to employee and staff benefits. The additional expenditures are in transportation, BOCES costs, debt services, special education, and more.

The Southold budget will add a full-time security guard at the elementary school, Mr. Gamberg said. The district only has one security guard working in both buildings.

The district’s main source of revenue is through the tax levy — bringing in $27.2 million, a 3.01 percent increase from last year.

Roughly $1.8 million will come from state aid, with an additional $1.6 million in federal aid and NJROTC programs, tuition, using money from the Capital Reserve, additional funding, and shared personnel services with the Greenport district.

The district expects to spend $309,482 of the $9.6 million in the district’s capital reserve. The expenditures would go into retirement, workers’ compensation, unemployment, and employee benefit accrued liability.

Mr. Gamberg said the proposal is subject to change. The board will meet once more prior to the April 17 budget adoption.

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