At its meeting on Tuesday, March 19, the Livingston Public Schools Board of Education approved a tentative budget for the 2024-2025 school year.The budget totals appropriations between the general fund, special revenues, and debt services amassing a total of $ 154,450,072. This will set Livingston taxes to be raised a total of $125,399,923. An additional Board meeting was held the day prior, on Monday, March 18, to ensure the Board had all its questions answered ahead of the March 19 vote.The Board also met with the finance committee on March 14 to discuss the district’s budget. Prior to the meeting, a number of adjustments had already been made. These included a $2.5 million cut to the budgeted fund balance, and eliminating $600,000 of recurring expenses. These recurring expenses will still appear in the proposed budget, but they will no longer be recurring. The finance committee also found and eliminated a number of non-recurring costs.At the Monday meeting, district administrator Thomas Lambe continued to recommend a 5.75 percent tax levy for the upcoming school year’s budget. According to Lambe, this is likely to be followed by a 2.6 percent tax levy for the 2025-2026 budget. This would, in total, be a 5.72 percent increase in taxes for the average Livingston home.Superintendent of schools Matthew Block said he has, “full confidence that with the budget being presented to the Board, without adding any recurring costs, we can retain programs and redeploy our staff in an advantageous way.”In looking ahead to the budget for the following school year of 20252026, Block acknowledged that “it’s only going to get more challenging as time passes.” With salary increases set to raise an extra $2.8 million, in addition to the expected $2 million increase in recurring costs, the budget for the 2025-2026 school year is already set to increase $4.8 million. Planning ahead, Lambe suggests potentially looking at class sizes and repurposing certain positions.Prior to the Board’s vote on the tentative budget on March 19, the Board was reminded that they still had a month to work on the tentative budget, before it is due to be finalized by the Board on April 30. Adjustments can be made to specific line items; the total budget and tax levy were the items being voted upon for the tentative budget.The Board is anticipating that various surveys being conducted throughout the district will yield a greater understanding of how ...
