By Marcello Iaia
The Enterprise — Marcello Iaia
Levers of change: School board candidates Earl Barcomb, left, and Amy Wright, right, speak before the Berne-Knox-Westerlo School District election results were announced Tuesday night. Barcomb received the highest number of votes and Wright was edged out of one of three open seats by 28 votes. A voter had crossed out Wright’s name in one of the two lever voting machines in the background. Vasilios Lefkaditis, president of the board, said 14 possible votes were made on the vandalized machine.BERNE — The landslide passage of a $22 million budget with no tax-levy increase was announced quickly Tuesday night at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, read from the back of lever voting machines where a voter had crossed out the name of a school-board candidate — one of five in a race for three seats.
“The concern is, if I walk into that machine, they changed their mind and chose not to run,” said Vasilios Lefkaditis, president of the school board.
Alan Zuk, chairman of the annual meeting, said the name was Amy Wright’s.
The 15 possible votes cast with the vandalized machine — as determined by Lefkaditis — would not make up the difference between the 336 votes for Wright and 364 votes for Chasity McGivern, who was sworn in as a board member immediately following the announcement, Tuesday night.
“That made me think, when does it become official?” said Wright on Wednesday, noting the results for the Schenectady School City School District, where she works, were described on its website as unofficial.
Zuk said Wednesday the results he announced were the total given to him by the head election inspector.
“The word ‘official’ wasn’t used; it was, again, the total of the machine and the absentees,” he said, when asked whether the inspector called them official. “The affidavits, I’m not certain where they enter into the count.”
Read more: BKW budget passes in a landslide, votes vandalized
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Published on Friday, 24 May 2013 21:38
By Tyler Murphy
The Enterprise — Tyler Murphy
Closing the polls: Voorheesville Administrative Assistant Deborah Baron, left, along with others, collects the school and library ballots shortly after the polls closed at 9 p.m. at the Voorheesville Middle School. Both the library and school budgets passed.NEW SCOTLAND — Nearly 60 percent of those who voted in the Voorheesville School District Tuesday supported the school’s budget.
The Voorheesville Public Library’s budget was also approved by the slim margin of 17 votes.
Of the 800 ballots cast in the school budget vote, 459, about 57.4 percent, were in favor and 341 against, the district’s $22,562,392 spending plan which is 3.17 percent larger than last year’s and will raise the tax levy in the district by 3.23 percent.
School board President Timothy Blow said the vote was closer than he thought it would be saying this year’s budget “made economic sense for the community.”
Two propositions also on the school ballot also passed. The bus purchase proposition passed with 471 in favor and 326 against. The proposition approves the purchased of two 60-passenger school buses. The repair reserve fund proposition was also approve by a vote of 511 in favor and 275 against. The proposition authorizes the transfer of up to $250,000 from the district’s unallocated fund balance in order to replenish a fund set aside for future repairs.
Read more: Library budget squeaks by V’ville plan gets 57% of vote
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Published on Friday, 24 May 2013 21:34
By Melissa Hale-Spencer
The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer
The mood was upbeat Tuesday night as early accounts showed Guilderland’s $91 million school budget for next year would pass; it did, with nearly 64 percent of the vote. Here, as the school board president, Colleen O’Connell, right, looks at a tally, Superintendent Marie Wiles confides her husband said he was voting “yes” on the budget because he wants to see her home a few nights.GUILDERLAND — About an hour after the polls closed on Tuesday night, as thunder rumbled, sheets of lightning ripped across the sky, and rain pummeled the roof, echoing in the gym at Guilderland Elementary School, the voice of Neil Sanders could hardly be heard.
School board members and administrators clustered closely about the business administrator as he read the election results, tallied from the five elementary-school polling places.
All three propositions — next year’s school budget of $91 million, a $1 million bus and equipment purchase, and a $3.5 million public library budget — passed easily at each polling place.
Applause and calls of “Yay!” greeted the news.
The three incumbents up for re-election on the nine-member school board — Gloria Towle-Hilt, Colleen O’Connell, and Barbara Fraterrigo — had not been challenged.
For the first time in seven years, there was a race, of sorts, for the trustee posts on the library’s 11-member board.
Read more: Kahn, Bosworth win 5-year library terms; All props pass in Guilderland
