“No hemorrhaging”

VOORHEESVILLE — Sixty percent of voters supported the school district’s $21 million budget for the next school year and roughly the same number returned incumbent school board member Gary Hubert to his seat.  He was unopposed.

About 830 voters turned out on Tuesday, slightly fewer than last year and slightly more than the year before that.

Superintendent Teresa Thayer Snyder attributes the turnout to the rainy weather, she said yesterday, and the fact that, in Voorheesville, the budget process has “been kind of quiet for us.”

The district didn’t “hemorrhage as badly” as some others in the area, she said of statewide cuts to aid.  “It wasn’t a hornet’s nest here,” Snyder said.

The budget will carry a tax levy increase of 2.07 percent and the district has already begun planning for the following year’s budget.  The 2012-13 budget is starting out with $250,000 less in aid since the infusion from the federal jobs money will disappear, Snyder said.

“We have come to expect the worst,” she said of budget planning.

Asked about building a budget that would comply with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed tax levy cap, which wouldn’t allow the increase in the amount a district collects in taxes to exceed 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower, Snyder said that Voorheesville would be all right in the short term.  The governor’s proposal would allow for a higher increase in the tax levy if at least 60 percent of voters approve of it.

Similar to the school budget, the library’s $1 million budget passed with 60 percent of the vote.  Bob Kent and Bryan Richmond, both incumbents, were returned to their seats on the library board with 505 and 488 votes, respectively, for five years.  They were the only two candidates on the ballot, so the third seat to be filled, which runs until June 30, 2015, was won by Stella Suib, who garnered three write-in votes.  There were three other names written in, each of which got one vote.

“I am a little surprised.  Joyfully surprised,” Suib said yesterday of her win.  She had planned to run for the library board, but missed the deadline for submitting her petition, she said, and thought she’d have to run next year.  “I didn’t even think to write my own name in,” she laughed.

Also on Tuesday, 59 percent of Voorheesville School District voters approved a $216,000 proposition for the purchase of a 60-passenger bus, two 28-passenger buses, and a Suburban.