BKW voters approve $25.6M budget with 3.2-percent tax increase

HILLTOWNS — Berne-Knox-Westerlo voters approved their school district’s proposed budget and, for the fourth year in a row, cast ballots for uncontested school board candidates, re-upping the three-year terms of incumbents Nathan Elble and Kimberly Lovell.

The $25.6 million budget, with its 3.2-percent tax increase, was approved 269-to-85. Elble received 295 votes, while Lovell received 289, with just six write-ins. Voters also authorized a roughly $644,000 school-bus purchase.

Budget and board votes at BKW have been tame in recent years, thanks to low tax increases (and some decreases) and no-contest elections. 

The tax increase of the 2023-24 budget is due primarily to rising insurance costs, which the district had been able to negotiate down somewhat from where they stood at the earliest public stages of the budget process. 

The state-set tax cap for the district this year was 4.1 percent.

More Hilltowns News

  • Berne’s election this year will be reformative, since every town board seat is up for grabs along with other high-profile positions like town clerk and highway superintendent. 

  • The Rensselaerville Water and Sewer Advisory Committee is holding a community meeting on Thursday, May 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Hilltown Commons Guggenheim Theater to get input on preferred well sites for a new public water system. 

  • Although an old agreement is still in place and would remain so indefinitely, the town of Berne is considering signing a new contract with the cable company, Spectrum, that would keep the franchise fee the town receives from the company the same but would remove an obligation for Spectrum to build new infrastructure in areas that meet a household-density threshold. 

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