Lew-Port adopts $38.821 million plan

by Terry Duffy
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, April 28, 2007

Under the gun by a state Education Department deadline, and beset with being cooped up inside a stuffy meeting room on a beautiful Saturday, the Lewiston-Porter School Board managed to come up with the needed votes and passed its $38,821,703 spending plan for the 2007-08 school year by a 4-2 margin.

The budget, which represents a 2.77 percent spending increase, reflects $400,000 to cover bond anticipation costs, which was added to the debt service portion of the plan. It also saw negative votes cast by members Ed Lilly and Scott Stepien, both of whom had reservations to a familiar concern – what they view as the board’s inability to control costs. “It’s too much,” says Lilly, noting that while the 07-08 plan “doesn’t represent a significant increase,” on the whole district “expenditures continue to increase” and will soon “become unaffordable.”

“This BOE needs to do a better job of controlling spending,” Stepien joined in.

Despite their concerns, the budget passed on “yes” votes by Dave Schaubert, Lenny Palumbo, Rob Laub and James Mezhir. Lou Palmeri was out of town and did not attend the session.

In a nutshell, Schaubert reported the district tax levy under the plan would increase by $273,832 – an increase of 1.25 percent. But due to the variations in the assessments for the towns of Lewiston and Porter, the impact to property owners in those two communities will differ. Lewiston property owners could be looking at an increase of 18 cents per $1,000 assessed, while up in Porter, which maintains near 100 percent full assessments on its properties, property owners could be seeing a drop by some 30 cents per $1,000 assessed.

The plan will be reviewed in detail at the May 1 budget hearing, beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Lew-Port Community Resource Center on the Creek Road campus. The board’s regular monthly session will follow.

On a final note, Lew-Port School Board members met in a brief session late yesterday afternoon where they approved three resolutions providing for legal expenses to be covered by the Lewiston-Porter School District for Schaubert, Palmeri and Lilly, stemming from the three separate petitions filed recently with the state Education Department seeking their removal.

One filed by Lilly seeks removal of Schaubert and Palmeri for their alleged “demonstrated poor judgment” with regards to funding particulars contained in the New York Power Authority settlement agreement with Lew-Port over campus improvement projects (Sentinel, March 31 and April 21).

The other, filed by board candidate Michael Gentile, seeks removal of Lilly from the board for his actions relating to acquiring and releasing poll books, allegedly “without using the proper procedures.” (Sentinel, April 21)

The resolutions, approved by attending board members minus Lilly, provides that “Pursuant to Section 3811 of Education Law, the Board of Education hereby accepts the defense and indemnification of Board of Education” members Schaubert, Palmeri and Lilly. The resolution is subject “to the Commissioner of Education issuing a ‘Certificate of Good Faith’ relative to the respondent’s exercise of his powers or in the performance of his duties … .”

The district reported that both Schaubert and Palmeri will be represented by Lew-Port counsel Karl Kristoff, Esq., and that Lilly “shall be represented” by counsel “ ‘to be determined.’ ”