ROME — Rome City School District Superintendent Peter Blake unveiled a 2023-2024 district budget proposal Monday at the Board of Education’s regular meeting.

“I’m not overly thrilled with it but it is balanced and it will work,” Blake admitted.

The total proposal is for a $145,869,432 budget, a $15,584,406 or 10.68% increase over the 2022-2023 budget of $130,285,026. The proposed tax levy is currently 2.9% in the tentative budget. For a $100,000 home, that would mean a $187 per year increase in taxes, Blake said.

He added that the district is a leader in the amount of the budget that is spent on instruction, with a full 77% allocated to educating its students. Of the total budget, 13% is for capital expenses including maintenance and custodial and 10% is for administration.

“We are putting it into our children,” he said.

Blake said he worked closely with district Director of Business and Finance David Dreidel and Assistant Superintendent for Operations and Management Robert Mezza Jr. in developing the proposed budget plan.

There is not a lot of flexibility in this proposed budget, Blake said, but they will continue to work on it to trim it down even further. The budget will not get any higher before it goes to the voters, Blake promised.

From here, budget discussions will continue to find any additional adjustments that can be made. The tentative budget will be adopted Tuesday, April 18 by the school board and the official budget hearing for the community is Monday, May 8.

The budget vote is from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 16.

In addition to the budget, voters will also consider four at-large positions available on the Board of Education as of July 1. Three of those positions are four-year terms and the other is for one year expiring June 30, 2024. Petitions are available at the district business office, 409 Bell Road, and interested candidates must return a petition to the office with 100 valid signatures by 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 26.

The top three vote-getters will get the three full-term seats on the board.

The library proposition for funding of the Jervis Public Library will see no change from the 2022-2023 budget, Blake added.

As currently proposed, this tentative budget plan continues the educational offerings the district has now, Blake promised.

“There are no reductions in staff and programming,” he said. “Everything we are doing now is still in there.”

However, an ideal budget would come in at around $141 million, but that would mean a reduction of $4 to $5 million - which would entail major cuts in programs that stakeholders want the district to keep, he explained.

“I think we can make this work even though it is not ideal,” Blake said.

For more information on the budget, visit www.romecsd.org.