Ex-superintendent: Piercing tax cap is a ‘Scarlet Letter’

<p>All but two of the 124 school spending proposals across Long Island passed during Tuesday&rsquo;s budget vote.</p>

News 12 Staff

May 16, 2018, 11:58 AM

Updated 2,171 days ago

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All but two of the 124 school spending proposals across Long Island passed during Tuesday’s budget vote.
Only Uniondale and North Bellmore failed to pass their budget.
Former Brentwood School Superintendent Michael Cohen says the number of budgets that are approved by voters is in stark contrast to before the 2011 law went into effect.
"The question was not how few districts would go down but how many would go down. It's been a paradigm shift,” says Cohen.
Cohen says more and more districts have figured out how to operate efficiently without exceeding the tax cap.
"You don't want to be the district that pierces the cap. It's like a Scarlet Letter."
North Bellmore resident Linda Walsh says she was not on board with her school district’s proposed budget increase, which called for a 3.4 percent increase in the tax levy.
"The taxes are already high," she says.
Superintendent Marie Testa said, “Although the district won 51.8 percent in favor of the budget, unfortunately the budget did not pass because we did not obtain the 60 percent majority needed to pass the budget due to the two community-submitted transportation referendums.”
Uniondale officials are discussing if they will put up the same budget for a revote. North Bellmore residents will go back to the polls on June 19.


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