NHP-GCP Superintendent’s Report: Final 2012-13 Budget Presentation

The following are the remarks of New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Superintendent Robert Katulak made during the public meeting of the NHP-GCP Board of Education on May 7, 2012:

Tonight we have our final discussion and presentation of that began back in October 2011. What central office along with all the budget builders’ work with the board of education to establish what we call “guiding principals” to create an educational program for our students that was fiscally sound.

We concentrated diligently on reducing all areas of expenditures without hurting our students, and without diminishing any academic programs. We also had an additional challenge this year of meeting the . We held a series of 10 public forums to present the budget, to , to explain expenditures, revenues and to .

What we have crafted through a collaborative process is a budget that preserves all of those essential programs, keeps all of our personnel and comes in with the lowest in the past 10 years. We have listened to your input and we have followed our hearts and our guidelines and your pocketbooks to make sure that we are not spending more than we need to.

We are presenting a budget that will adhere to the governor’s tax cap and will require therefore a simple majority-rule vote.

Our three-part budget for the next year is as follows. This is required by the state education department to present this at each of the budget hearings. Administrative budget: $3,523,469 (10.21 percent); program budget: $25,462,296 (73.82 percent); capital budget $5,508,615 (15.9 percent); total: $34,494,380.

In the final analysis, the difference for an average tax bill of a passed proposed budget versus a contingency budget will save each homeowner $82.01.

We hope that you will continue to support the school district and we remind everybody to come to vote as an informed voter on May 15 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. here at the .