Last week the Marlboro School Administration gave a final summary presentation on the 2025-26 budget. The School Board is scheduled to review and approve the final budget at their April 24 meeting. The final tax levy amount has not yet been decided and will be determined by the School Board in the coming weeks.

As it now stands, the 2025-26 school budget shows a year-over-year increase of 2.34%, or $1,535,542, from the current school year of 65,591,761 to $67,127,303 next year. Emerson Segara, Director of Business and Finance, said the $1.5 million increase is due mostly to salaries, which are up by $517,919 to $29,783,299 and benefits, that are up by $771,231 to $16,002,357 and Transportation has increased by $97,667 to $4,004,347 next year. He added that, “in all other categories, we’ve applied strict cost controls to ensure fiscal discipline.”

Superintendent Michael Rydell said they have ‘fine tuned’ the 2025-26 budget to appropriate levels.

“We took the previous year’s budget, this year’s budget and monitored what were the projected expenses versus what were the real expenses, where were there budget transfers and made decisions on which line items could be reduced in order for us to get to a number that preserves all programs, allows us full operation as a district, but is also being fiscally responsible,” Rydell said.
Rydell and Segara said the Danskammer power plant’s PILOT [Payment In Lieu of Taxes] is ending in June and the property will be going onto the tax roll. If their assessment is not reduced through a challenge, the company’s tax payment to the school district could theoretically be $3 million, however, Segara said the district is budgeting conservatively, “assuming the power plant’s tax contribution will remain around the historical PILOT level of approximately $1.5 million, as we anticipate the assessment will be challenged.”

The compact with the Roseton plant, which sits beside Danskammer, is known as a Community Benefit Agreement and is not considered a PILOT. They were contributing $525,000, which has now ended but was considered revenue and went into the school’s General Fund. The Danskammer and Roseton plants were contributing a combined total of $2,025,000 to the school district.

The district has a few other PILOT agreements with local companies: In the 2025-26 school year Marlboro Distributors (PODS) tax bill will be $107,738 and their PILOT runs through 2030; Brooklyn Bottling’s tax bill will be $101,054 and also runs through 2030; Nexamp Solar’s tax bill will be $8,780, with their PILOT running through 2039; and a PILOT with Independent Solar LLC will soon start, with an expected tax bill of $217,573 for 2025-26 for a total $435,145 in PILOT agreements.

Rydell said the school board will have to decide on approving the proposed $67 million budget, “and then if approved, how are we balancing that budget, so where will we fall on the tax cap piece, so does one pierce the tax cap which means the budget would have to be approved by a super-majority or be below the tax cap.”

Rydell said some variables are beyond the control of the school district that present challenges and uncertainties when developing a budget, especially when New York State is late in passing their own budget as they are now.
The district has to adopt next year’s budget 25 days before the public vote; in this case April 24 is when the school board will adopt the 2025-26 budget and the public vote is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20th.

“There are time concerns for us because we’re putting a budget out for our school board to adopt and for our community to approve without actually knowing what turns out to be a pretty significant value on our particular budget, this particular year,” he said, referencing the Danskammer issue. “If the state adopts their budget all of our state aid runs would be known at that point.”

Rydell concluded by highlighting the work that went into developing the 2025-26 budget.

“It really took a lot of collaboration and communication among our business professionals, our Board of Education and all our administrators because we are making some level of assumptions in order to put forth the most responsible budget, not only for the 2025-26 school year, but also for fiscal stability over the next several years and minimizing the amount of Reserves that we’re using to balance the budget while also reducing expenses to the greatest extent practical.”

Full details of the school budget for 2025-26 can be viewed online at www.marlboroschools.org/page/budget.