Vote Yes to the Tax Cap Compliant Budget on June 18th

To the Briarcliff School District Community: If you watched Monday night’s Briarcliff Manor School District’s BOE meeting last night, you would have caught a presentation on the district’s response to the “Wasserman/Linder” plan. During the election, Wasserman and Linder campaigned vigorously to have the budget defeated. Starting as early as March, claims were made by Wasserman and Linder of “savings” that were hidden in the budget. They took out ads in the paper, spoke out at BOE meetings, mailed out flyers and stood in town telling people that they had a magic plan to solve Briarcliff School District’s financial problems. They created an atmosphere of distrust and doubt in your mind about the district’s budget. They bullied and threatened the PTA when the PTA, as authorized under their NYS charter, urged voters to pass the budget. They bullied and threatened high school students that prepared a video supporting the budget (In connection with this, Wasserman went as far as to FOIL all students emails). Then they refused to share their “magic” plan. Well, Monday night we finally saw that there is no plan. They sent an email to the community on Monday. Their “plan” was a list of expenses and revenues that they believed were either over-budgeted or under- budgeted. There was no back up, no analysis, no calculations, and no assumptions- just their unfounded and unsubstantiated claims that there were savings in the budget. Disgusting campaign tactics aside, why care? Because the budget vote was defeated on May 21st, partially due to voters believing their claims. The next vote is June 18th. The school district has cut an additional $620,000 from the budget to bring it to a tax cap compliant budget. If this budget is defeated the district will have to cut an additional $1.1 million. Make an informed decision. Sending a message to the Board of Education for a tax cap compliant budget was a fair request from the community; but it did not require the noise, lies and confusion that the community was subjected to. When you vote again on June 18th, remember there is no magic money coming from the Wasserman/Linder plan. Please vote yes to the tax cap compliant budget on June 18th. Laura Maglietta (author is the Co-Vice-President of the Briarcliff PTA and former Co-President of the BPTA)