The Montauk School District will hold a public hearing on Tuesday at 6 p.m. on its 2024-25 budget proposal, welcoming residents who want to make comments or ask questions about the district’s fairly complicated $24.21 million spending plan.
“I’ve definitely had to answer questions on it,” Joshua Odom, Montauk’s superintendent, said in explaining the strange situation the district came up against this year — the discovery, by a school board member, that taxpayers were accidentally overcharged last year by approximately $56 per thousand dollars of assessed value.
Thus, the $24.21 million budget carries a year-over-year spending increase of about 3 percent, all while maintaining the same programs and services for the students and giving money back to the residents in the form of a tax credit. All told, taxpayers will collectively get back $1.81 million this way — the $1.76 million they were overcharged, plus interest. This amounts to a tax-levy decrease, the only one in East Hampton Town this year, of 5.93 percent.
“At the end of the day we’re looking at it through the lens that it was an error that was discovered, and we’re doing everything we can to correct it for the taxpayers,” Mr. Odom said.
Academically, the need to maintain a high level of programs and services “is, in my mind, a byproduct of the Covid years,” he said. “A big part of this year has been streamlining some programs and putting some more intention behind how we’re running some of our enrichment and after-school activities. We’ve been creative in finding ways we can maintain those opportunities for our students in a way that’s cost effective for the district. Thanks to those efforts, we don’t have plans to cut programs for next year. We feel very lucky that way.”
For the Montauk School Board this year, there is one candidate running for one five-year term. Sarah Roberts has been serving on the board since January, appointed to fill the vacancy created when Tom Flight was elected to the East Hampton Town Board. Ms. Roberts, a parent of three children and a previous PTA volunteer, was one of four people to throw their names in for consideration for the board appointment, but is the only one seeking election this year through official balloting.
The budget vote and board election are on May 21 from 2 to 8 p.m. in the school gym.
There will be an in-person voter registration session on Tuesday from 2 to 6 p.m. in the school’s district office. Qualified voters are citizens at least 18 years old who have been residents of the district for at least 30 days before the day of the budget vote. Registration can also be done via the Suffolk County Board of Elections.
May 14 is the deadline for both absentee ballot applications and applications for early voting by mail. Both need to be received by the district clerk by 5 p.m. on May 21.