Capital Reserve Funds are voter-approved, strictly regulated by law in New York, and one of the very limited tools school districts have to save money over a number of years for large capital projects the community chooses to support via referendum.
Attempting to pressure North Shore schools to remove a referendum item from the ballot is profoundly anti-democratic. Further, consider this: do you want your school district to make financial decisions based on some number of emails or signatures on petitions? Or should everyone have the chance to vote? We have 15,000 or so community members and voting is limited to those who live here. The district also relies on highly qualified professionals in planning for the long-term viability of our schools. How should districts weigh that advice versus petitions?
In a few years, the high school will likely need a new track. Tracks, as one example, are expensive. Each capital reserve fund can only be used for the specific projects the voters approved. The track was not listed in older reserve funds because we did not need to replace it yet. So, there are no funds for it, and other reserves are committed to other purposes. Districts cannot just save up over many years because as we all know at this point, reserves and surpluses are highly regulated and limited.
To save for a track or other new needs, community members would have to be given the chance to approve a new capital reserve through the ballot -- or, be denied the opportunity to decide for themselves.
Municipal finance is complicated and $110 million organizations are complex. Consider an analogy that puts reserves in a different perspective:
The district's "savings" in the form of reserves and fund balance represent around 3 months of spending.With the pandemic as one example, the district has not received tax payments on time and has been forced to borrow to meet payroll - and would have had to borrow more at a higher cost otherwise.
Much of what "Facebook" suggests be done with reserves is not legal but moreover does not make sense for the long term viability of our district. Find all the information on reserves over at http://www.northshoreschools.org/boe/Budget.html
