School officials had to answer early in the year to a lot of parents shaken up by the accident.
Early in the 2013 calendar year, school officials also braced for a tough budget season. They ended up getting good news — a $412,000 boost in state aid. District officials used the money to restore some cut teaching positions.
In the end, voters approved the $38.5 million budget, which abided by the state’s tax levy limit.
On May 21, voters lined up to decide if incumbents Sue Gilmore and Tom Miller would keep their seats or if Vincent Rizzi, the former board president, should come back.
Voters ended up keeping Gilmore and Miller over Rizzi.
As the spring grew into summer, district officials looked into energy efficiency and toyed with the idea of adding solar arrays to school property.
In June, Assistant Superintendent Roseann Bayne resigned to take a position with Oswego BOCES, closer to her home in Mexico, NY.
Behind the scenes for most of 2013, school officials were getting ready to put a $25 million capital campaign to fix the district’s buildings in front of voters. Board members developed a project to repair outdated infrastructure and increase school security.
When that vote finally did come on Dec. 10, taxpayers said no by a 2-1 margin. Only 346 voted for capital improvements, while 645 voted against them.
Town of Lloyd: Looking forward
Looking forward, Supervisor Hansut said that his number-one goal will be to see the “Tuscan Wine Village” proposal through. This project is being proposed by Harry Feinberg and calls for 415,000 square feet of light industrial space as well as a hotel and a conference center off Route 9W. “This could have a huge economic impact on our town, including job creation, increased tax base and bringing more people and businesses to Lloyd,” said the supervisor. There needs to be a full State Environmental Quality Review, which is ongoing, as well as several zoning changes. And both the town and the developer need to figure out how to bring water to the project, as the town lost its grant application to fund the extension of municipal water lines south along Route 9W all the way to the Town of Marlborough. “That was a blow,” said Hansut. “We thought we had a real good shot at getting that grant, but we’re going to apply for it again; and come January, the board is going to look at what our options are.”
He also said that he wanted to focus on ways that the town could “best promote and market our new Gateway region. We’ve been talking with Scenic Hudson, who might help us with a marketing strategy so we can get that up and running.”
The third goal that Hansut has is to see the .9-mile extension of the Hudson Valley Rail Trail from the Tony Williams Park to the firehouse completed, leveraging the $1.9 million grant that the town has received. “The state has said that they are intent on extending the rail trail from Dutchess County through Highland to New Paltz, Gardiner, Rosendale, Kingston and beyond. It’s critical that we get this last piece done, so that they can begin to connect our rail trail with the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail,” he said.
Community events in Highland continue to draw more and more people, like the Hudson Valley Harvest Fest, the Halloween celebration, the spring festival and the free concert series in the summer. “I’m very pleased with what we’ve accomplished this year: mostly keeping our financial house in order and ensuring that we stayed below the tax cap without having to go into our general fund,” said Hansut.
Highland schools: Looking forward
As 2013 rolls into 2014, school board members will find themselves soon thrown back into the full swing of budget.
“The budget is always a major topic of discussion and concern at this time of year. And with the property tax levy limit, it continues to be challenging,” Superintendent Deborah Haab said. “We’ll continue to lobby our legislators to look at the Gap Elimination Adjustment to see if they can’t do something about that.”
Despite the loss at the polls of the $25 million capital improvement project, Highland Board of Education will have to almost immediately start trying to pick up the pieces.
“We’ll be talking about that. We’ll be reexamining the scope of work,” she said. “Much — if not all of it — is needed. And we’re looking at holding meetings to get feedback from the community.
“Going into the vote, we had very little feedback from the community about the project at the meetings we held. So hopefully this will encourage more people to come out.”
Board members will have to assess why people voted no. They’ll need to understand those concerns.
“We have some information from exit surveys, but not very many people filled them out,” she said, adding that the board will have to regroup and determine what work needs to get done.
In other words: expect to hear about a new, scaled-back capital project in 2014.
Highland recently won a $231,000 state grant, which they’ll use for professional development and to help train teachers for implementing the Common Core Standard. That’s something that has the superintendent excited.
That money is important because budget cuts haven’t been kind to teacher training.
“Over time, we’ve significantly scaled back our professional development budget — for obvious reasons. So that’s something I think is important work our staff will be engaged in,” she said. “That’s a real positive thing for us.”
