By JEFF MORRIS
In what turned out to be his final budget presentation for the Bedford Central School District, assistant superintendent for business and operations, Thomas Cole, gave an overview of the proposed 2025-26 budget at the Feb. 26 school board meeting.
As had been promised at the last board meeting, the presentation focused on projecting current programs and staffing into the next year. It began with a look at enrollment over a 10-year period.
“We continue to see little to no growth in student enrollment into the 2026 school year,” said Cole. “This is important with regard to the impact on staffing, especially at the elementary level.”
He said they saw no need to add staffing at the elementary level.
Showing the major areas of expenditures, Cole said the percentage of money dedicated to instruction remained constant — just over 51 percent — from the 2024-25 year to the 2025-26 year. Looking at expenditures another way, by category, he showed that salaries and benefits together make up about 76 cents of every dollar spent in the school district.
“Enrollment enlightens us with regard to staffing; staffing is projected with regard to contractual obligations and related benefits,” he said.
Salaries for 2025-26 will increase $1.2 million, which Cole said was an interesting number, because that amount is the net of 15 teacher retirements. “Each teacher retirement represents about $50-$60,000 of savings to the school district budget, because the replacement costs are lower than the senior level teachers that are leaving the school district,” Cole said.
As if to illustrate that point, a later breakdown of expenditures by budget line showed the ESL program having a $53,320 decrease between 2024-25 and 2025-26. “It’s not a reduction to the program itself,” said Cole. “That’s the net result of two teacher retirements within that section of the budget.”
Broken down by major area, General Support is going from $14,517,135 to $14,589,220, an increase of $72,085, or 0.5 percent; Instruction from $80,530,930 to $82,957,650, a $2,426,720 increase, or 3.01 percent; Transportation from $9,552,150 to $9,904,765, a $352,615, or 3.69 percent increase; and Undistributed, which includes employee benefits, debt service and transfers to other funds, a $2,158,580 or 4.21 percent increase, from $51,224,785 to $53,383,365.
The total budget for 2024-25 was $155,825,000; the total proposed for 2025-26 is $160,835,000, an increase of $5,010,000, or 3.22 percent.
Cole said revenue is going to be a big driver in the impact on the taxpayer and the tax cap. He said they are going to need just over $314,000 from the fund balance in order to comply with the tax cap. Total state aid, he said, is down over $90,000, while sales tax revenue from the county is expected to increase “to the trending actual experience we’ve had in recent months.” Sales tax is projected as $3 million, a $50,000 increase over last year.
Cole spent considerable time explaining the tax cap calculation, as well as the variations in tax rates among all the municipalities that are part of the district — Bedford, Mount Kisco, Pound Ridge, New Castle, and North Castle — caused by the differences in assessed values and the equalization rates imposed by the state. In total, he said, “the budget that we’re putting forth here, in this form, impacts the tax rate by 3.44 percent.”
Trustee Robert Mazurek asked how the district could get under the 3.44 percent.
“There are only two ways to reduce the impact of the tax cap,” said Cole. “To apply district reserves as additional revenue to drive the number down under the tax cap, or to cut costs—or a combination of the two.”
There were further questions and discussion with the board, regarding debt service and possible ways of “smoothing out” the debt “bump” resulting from the district’s capital projects — options for paying down existing debt using different designated funds. Cole also explained allowable uses for reserve funds, and how the fund balance was built up. Asked whether having reserves of over $27 million would cause the district to be scrutinized by the state, Cole said he did not believe so; that in fact, the district’s credit rating was recently reviewed, and Moody’s said they thought the reserve amount was actually too low, and should be closer to $32 million.
After Cole left the meeting [see separate story on Page 1] superintendent Robert Glass said the purpose of the meeting was to present, budget-to-budget, where they would stand if they carried all the activities of this year into next year. “Our next meeting on March 12, will talk about some proposals we might think about, for non-recurring and recurring adds, to the current operations budget,” said Glass, “and you’d be able to talk about those opportunities and possibilities, and have some deliberation and discussion about them, with this as a baseline.”
Glass said this discussion would be very useful for him, as he would be bringing his recommended budget to the next meeting and wanted to find out if the board was comfortable going to the cap. “If you don’t go to the tax cap, it just bears understanding that that is an opportunity that will not ever come back, and it’s lost to you every year after that,” he said, adding, “At the same time, our taxpayers are paying a lot.”
Mazurek argued that he thought they should stop adding to the reserves when there are good things they could be doing with the money, and that it is worth taking a risk. Trustee Steven Matlin agreed.
“There are calculated risks you can take, without being reckless,” he said, while noting they had made a promise to taxpayers four years ago when they voted to approve the capital bond that they would offer them some debt relief.
Mazurek advocated for making a 3-year plan — “like every other district around us,” he said — rather than dealing every year with needs and expenses that seem to keep popping up, and the discussion came to an end.