As the Port Washington School District works on the 2013-14 budget in a struggling economy and in the face of state mandates, the school board is looking at creating new sources of revenue.
“As we go forward in tax cap challenge environment, we need to come up with a large amount of money from other sources than tax receipts,” said Alan Baer, a school board member, at Tuesday’s board meeting at Schreiber High School.
And while Baer gave credit to the fundraising capacities of local organizations such as the Port Washington Education Foundation and HSAs, “the reality is we need to find streams of hundreds of thousands dollars or face continued erosion,” he said.
Possibilities to consider include advertising around the turf field and naming rights, Baer said. Other ideas include approaching “graduates of Schreiber who have gone on to do wonderful, prosperous things,” and corporations that donate equipment, Baer noted.
Adding that they might not come forward, Baer noted that there are several local billionaires who might want to help. “It’s not going to hurt to have a group of people to put together a sustainable program where we court some of them,” he said, pointing out that “it wouldn’t take a lot” to “go a long way inside our seven buildings."
Baer expected to develop more ideas on creating new sources of revenue in the next month or so.
Watch the full webcast of Tuesday's school board meeting.
Between the school taxes and the police tax, we are getting crushed
It appears that NJ has the option of doing so. Perhaps it is time for NY to do the same http://www.state.nj.us/education/finance/fp/dwb/PL2011c202FAQ.pdf
In other words, there are no answers. There is absolutely no possibility of property tax relief in our lifetimes. Accept it and move on with your lives.
"Zero" percent increase? Uh, not going to happen. The zero applies only to that part of the levy that is subject to the " cap". Given the rise in pension obligations, is almost impossible for a district on this island to have a zero percent increase unless voters want to slash programs and freeze hiring and drastically increase class sizes. And if you think a 2% cap would really lead to anything resembling tax relief in your lifetime, if it really were a cap (which it isn't), you have to sit down and do some math. Keeping in mind the true value of median wage increases after inflation in the past forty years. We are not going to see property tax relief in our lifetimes.