By THOMAS LUCKIE III

OGDENSBURG -- The Ogdensburg City School District currently faces a potential budget gap of $986,285 heading towards the adoption of a 2018-19 school year budget.

The Board of Education Finance Committee met with school district administration to discuss the budget before Monday’s meeting.

“At this point, budgeted revenues fall short of budgeted expenditures by just under a million dollars,” board member Michael Tooley said.

Tooley also pointed out that the budget does not reflect any cuts to student programs in its current state and is within the district’s tax cap limit.

The Board of Education has consistently taken the position that cuts to student programs will not be recommended over the past few years.

“There’s also a likelihood of an on time budget by April first, if that happens then we might have more solid numbers on state, which every indication is will be a higher number than we’re currently seeing,” Tooley added.

Superintendent Timothy Vernsey also then shared some potential plans for alleviating a significant portion of the nearly million dollar problem.

“We’ve identified a few things that we feel can help the situation and have come up with about $428,000 worth of adjustments that we think are pretty solid,” Vernsey said.

“That still leaves us with a $558,000 problem, and that’s without additional state aid and other revenue sources that we sometimes get, depending on the year,” he added.

The bulk of the $428,000 of adjustments would come from not replacing employees scheduled to retire at the end of the current school year.

“At this stage in the game, we aren’t looking at any cuts in regards to laying off people, but we are looking very closely at any retirements to see if we can somehow manage not replacing those [employees] and still maintaining programs and the quality of education that our kids deserve,” he said.

Vernsey also noted that the district should save approximately $80,000 by going without an assistant superintendent for six months, as he is scheduled to retire on Jan. 1, 2019 and current Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Technology Kevin Kendall will assume the superintendent position.

“Kevin and I have to put together a plan so he can run the district by himself with the help of the administration until July,” Vernsey said.

While Vernsey stated the district has done a good job of building up a fund balance over the past few years, he also cautioned that starting to spend that fund balance in order to balance the budget can be a slippery slope.

“It is getting more and more difficult to do this. My sense is that down the road some tough decisions are going to have to be made if the funding structure in New York State doesn’t change,” he said.

The current superintendent also advised the board against asking the taxpayers to go over the tax cap.

“I don’t recommend that, I think we need to show them that we’re making tough decisions,” he said.

Vernsey also mentioned that he plans to ask North Country Assemblywoman Addie A.E. Jenne, D-Theresa, about proposed legislation to help school districts that have a high tax exempt property burden, as 70 percent of property within the district is currently tax exempt, according to the superintendent.

“We’ll come back next time with a budget that is balanced using fund balance and reserves and continue working on cost saving measures to mitigate the use of that fund balance and reserves,” Vernsey said.

The superintendent also stated that district will likely implement a spending freeze as of July 1.

The next Board of Education meeting will be held at Ogdensburg Free Academy at 6 p.m. on Monday, April 2.