Brian Cournoyer
Brian Cournoyer. (Photo by Lauren Thomas)
Brian Cournoyer missed out on winning a school board seat in 2011 by 43 votes. He has two children in the district.
Cournoyer, 40, is sales rep for Dutchess Beer Distributors, and he’s lived in New Paltz for two years, grew up in Newburgh and has lived in the area for pretty much his whole life. Other than his run last year for the school board, he’d never run for elected office before.
Since he lost, Cournoyer has gone repeatedly to the school board meetings — often asking tough questions or telling Superintendent Maria Rice where he stands on issues.
Q: Why are you running for school board?
BC: The answer that I give everybody most of the time is that somebody has to. But the real answer is that education is, to me, probably one of the most important services that government provides. Everything that’s good about living in this country and living in this area comes from a good education, in my opinion.
At the immediate local level, everybody benefits. Even if you don’t have kids in the system, you benefit if you’re a property owner — you benefit from higher property values. If you do have kids in the systems, obviously you know your kids benefit. It’s just a really important thing, and I think it’s really important to protect it.
Q: What are the top three issues facing the New Paltz schools, and if you got elected how would you address them?
BC: I think the biggest challenge that’s facing the district this year, again the budget. You know, the tax cap has changed everything. It’s changed how and how much we can ask taxpayers to contribute.
So what we have now is a system that’s fundamentally changed. In order to go beyond the tax cap, you need a 60 percent majority vote and there’s some real repercussions if that vote fails. The board can then present a second budget, and if that’s defeated, then we have a 0 percent tax levy — which would be devastating.
And I think what’s really important for people to understand this year is that even though the school board is asking for an increase in the tax levy, the budget is actually shrinking. There’s still, I’m not sure the exact figure now — but it was something like a little over $1 million being cut from the budget this year, despite the fact that the budget proposal they’re putting on the ballot is a (tax) increase. And the reason for that is the cuts in state funding, state aid, federal aid and the rising costs for health insurance, and a number of other things. Costs keep going up, and funding keeps going down.
And really the only tool that the board has at its disposal right now is to raise taxes. So that’s the number-one issue in my mind. And I’m not sure what we can do in the short-term to kind of mitigate that other than to raise taxes — and look for as many ways to save on programs we already have and still keep those programs in place.
The third is also related to funding. The third thing I think the board should be looking at this year is to concentrate on our Legislative Action Committee. Perhaps join forces with other districts to put pressure on Albany to really change these things — if not to repeal the tax cap, which I don’t think is going to happen. The ultimate solution is going to be to change the way schools are funded — to do away with the property tax funding and come up with a better, more equitable system.
It kind of behooves us to join forces with other districts, because we’re not the only ones that are suffering under this. There are some school districts that are suffering a lot more.
Q: This year school board members settled on a $50.31 million budget that would raise the tax levy by 4.4 percent. Would you have voted yes for that budget too? Why or why not?
BC: Yes, I would have. The reason being that under the original budget proposal that they came out with — which was a 3.4 percent levy and which was inside the tax-cap limit — we were looking at losing too many programs that are, I think, really important to the district. The pre-K program was slated to be cut. Elementary foreign language — these are programs that draw people to this district. People move to New Paltz because of the schools.
One of the comments that I made at a board meeting recently was that it took a long time to get to this level — to get to this level of quality. And we got here because people wanted it, and it took a long time. It didn’t happen overnight, and if we start cutting things like this — it’s easy to get rid of them and it’ll be really hard, maybe even impossible to get them back.
Times are tough right now. I think we need to get our priorities in line and figure out what’s really important to us. I just think there isn’t anything more important than this — than educating our kids.
Q: After briefly promoting $12.3 million in fixes to the four school buildings – known as the “Health & Safety Bond” project – the board took it off May’s ballot. Do you support those repairs? Would you have approached the decision to remove that bond project differently?
BC: That’s a tough one. It’s an easy question to answer whether I support it or not, because those repairs are vital. They need to be done. Everybody knows that. They’ve been needed for a long time now. I think the longer we put it off, the worse it gets and the more expensive it gets. I’m afraid eventually somebody’s going to get seriously hurt. And that’s going to be finally the thing that gets this done.
Having said that, I understand the board’s motivation for taking it off the ballot for May. They are dealing with the tax cap this year, and they are planning to ask the public to override the tax cap. That was the first year we’ve had to deal with this. And times are tough, people are hurting. I think that they worry about asking for too much at once. So I can understand that, and I think that it shows some compassion for the taxpayers. And I think the taxpayers deserve some compassion.
I talk a lot about how school’s an important thing — that we need to spend money to keep our schools good. But at the same time, we need to think about the impact on our residents. So I think maybe putting it off for a short time was the right decision. I don’t know when or if they’ve decided it’ll come back for a vote. I do know that it’ll have to come back eventually — probably sooner rather than later.
So I support the repairs, I think they’re absolutely necessary. I also understand and at least partially support the decision to take it off the ballot.
Q: New Paltz school board members are currently developing a long-term facilities plan that could call for the closure of two schools and a consolidation down to two campuses. It could also call for the closure of one school and a consolidation to three campuses. Do you support that consolidation? If not, how else should the district move forward?
BC: I support some consolidation. I’m not sure I would support going down to two campuses, but certainly going down to three seems reasonable to me. How we’re going to do that, I don’t know. Well you’re aware that the land acquisition they had recently failed — and consolidation isn’t possible without land. I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. But I would be in favor of consolidating at least two of our campuses down to one and going with a three-campus system.
I’m not sure that going from four down to two is feasible or practical. But I would have to see what the long-term facilities planning commission comes up with. But certainly, we need a long-term facilities plan. That’s been something that’s been needed for a very long time. Long-term planning has not been the strong suit of the New Paltz School District, in my opinion. That’s part of the reason that the schools are in the condition that they’re in at this point.
Q: How will your previous experiences help you if you got elected, and how would they be an asset for those who vote for you? In other words, why should people vote for you?
BC: I’ve spent a lot of time going to board meetings and learning as much as I can about the way things work. And it’s been a big learning experience for me, so I certainly feel like I’ve learned a lot just since the last election when I ran.
As far as what I bring to the table, I’m a working-class guy. I understand that this is a tough economic time for people. It is for me. I understand people with kids in school, because I’ve got two. And I understand kids with special needs, because one of my children has been through the early intervention system through special education in his school.
So things like the school psychologist and special education teachers, and things like that, I don’t think I can emphasize enough how important that stuff is. You know, my son is doing great now and I credit those people 100 percent. And the same with my step-daughter, during the time when she was having to go to the hospital, one, two, three times a week sometimes — these people were there to make sure that she got the help that she needed. In the same vein, I was glad to see that pre-K was back in the budget, because that is, I think it’s been shown that that is a money saver over time — even with the small enrollment. I think there’s only 13 kids in pre-K each year or something like that.
