Garrison has two candidates for two spots
By Chip Rowe
School district voters in Cold Spring and Garrison will go to the polls on May 21 to elect Board of Education trustees and consider proposed budgets for 2019-20.
There are three candidates for two open seats on the Haldane school board and two candidates for two seats in Garrison.
At Haldane, Jennifer Daly is seeking her third, 3-year term on the five-member board, while Laura O’Connell and Sean McNall are newcomers. Laura Hammond, who was appointed to the board in 2015 and elected to a full term in 2016, is not running for re-election.
O’Connell is director of capital projects and construction for The Public Theater, while McNall is the associate artistic director and director of education for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.
The Haldane board on April 23 approved a proposed budget that includes $24.6 million in spending, an increase of 2 percent. About $3 million in revenue will come from state aid. The board also will ask voters to approve propositions to spend up to $1.6 million on capital improvements and up to $75,000 for a school bus and equipment for utility vehicles.
Proposed expenditures include $1.2 million for operations, $631,000 for maintenance, $7.3 million for instruction, $2.9 million for special education, $448,000 for athletics, $1 million for transportation, $5.9 million for employee benefits and $1.3 million for debt service.
For details, see haldaneschool.org; a public hearing is scheduled for May 7. (In other recent business, the board approved a $182,000 contract with a Staatsburg firm to renovate bathrooms in the elementary school.)
Garrison district
In Garrison, there are two candidates for the seats on the seven-member board held by Jill Corson Lake, who is seeking re-election to her second term, and Derek DuBois, who is not running for a fourth term. The other candidate is Sarah Tormey, a romance novelist who is president of the Garrison’s Children Education Fund.
The Garrison board on April 10 approved a proposed budget of $11 million, an increase of 1 percent. It includes $1.34 million for administration, $6.3 million for instruction, $746,000 for transportation, $2.16 million for employee benefits and $516,000 for debt service. The district expects to receive $918,000 in state aid.
If the budget is approved by voters, the tax rate would rise from $20.81 per $1,000 of assessed value to $21.24. For a home in Philipstown with a market value of $700,000, that would translate to about $140 annually. See gufs.org for details; a public hearing on the budget is scheduled for May 8.
The ballot will not include a proposition to approve spending for a high-efficiency hot water heating system plus air conditioning in elementary and middle school classrooms that was estimated last fall to cost $7.6 million. Board President Ray O’Rourke said the board hopes to present the proposition to voters in the fall.
In a separate vote, the Desmond-Fish Library will ask district voters on the May 21 ballot to approve increasing its annual public funding from $75,000 to $300,000.
