In May 2004, after at least five years of rapidly increasing school budgets, the Roslyn voters rejected a budget with a 9.2 percent increase in controllable costs (i.e., not counting debt servicing) of the school district. The money raised in the previous budgets had covered large, systematic thefts, with no observable effect on an operation that was definitely not frugal.

For the second vote, a newly hired business administrator managed by heroic efforts to put together in a very short time a lower budget, which passed, going through the lines and cutting what obviously did not risk to hinder the operation of the school programs in place. He could not be expected to achieve more. Although no one could vouch for the soundness of approach, structure and content of the original budget, he could not address those concerns.

It was promised before the second vote of 2004 that the next budget will be constructed by determining what are the truly necessary activities and what their real costs are, from ground up ( a so-called "zero budget"). This promise was not kept. Instead, the last year's allocation was used as the base value for most programs and the projected increase in needs compounded to it. The result was a preliminary budget proposal steeply higher than last year's.

The proposal was reviewed by a Budget Advisory Committee, working with the administration. After public discussion, the board accepted part of the proposed reductions and adopted a budget showing a 3.5 percent increase in controllable costs (significantly higher than inflation). The reductions came mostly through a whittling process, rather than from structural reforms. As a result, some of them are not sustainable in future years and some appear as expenditures postponed to the next budget. Unless the approach is changed, we will never have a budget based on cost-effective procedures.

Some of us have tried to obtain information from the district on the soundness and cost-effectiveness of programs and operations through letters, established committees, and Freedom of Information Act requests. Many of these remained unanswered. What we obtained and what is publicly available gave us cause for concern, thus:

* Programs have been operated for years, without evaluating whether they achieve the stated goals and without a methodology for such an evaluation.

* Programs outside the school mandates are offered to beneficiaries who could easily pay for them without needing assistance from the taxpayers.

* Even when fees are charged, the district does not calculate fully the value of such programs and services and is thus not able to recover in full even the direct costs, not to speak of the indirect costs, systematically ignored.

* At least one program was altered and expanded by its manager and unbudgeted money was spent on it, without a vote of approval of the board of education.

On these grounds, I consider that the district will be best served by a No vote on May 17. The promised openness and transparency have not yet been attained and cases of unnecessary expenditures still exist. Significant cuts in excess spending in the current proposal can be made in a few weeks and a better budget given to the voters.

In the budget presentation meeting, we were told that next year things will be better, maybe we will have a "zero budget" developed. We heard that already, in 2004.

Dr. Dan Farcasiu