Despite winning 51.5% approval, the Pine Plains Central School District’s $40.78 million budget failed to pass on Tuesday, May 19. The 2026-27 spending plan, which exceeded the 3.4% allowable district tax cap by 1.03%, received 458 yes votes and 432 no votes — falling short of the mandatory 60% supermajority required to pierce the tax cap.
Following the budget’s defeat, the Board of Education met on Tuesday, ratified the results, and agreed on the next step: The district will prepare a revised budget that comes in at or below the cap.
“Hard conversations are necessary,” Superintendent Brian Timm said at the meeting.
According to Timm, the new budget will require $290,569 in additional cuts. The board is expected to review the proposed reductions at its Tuesday, May 26, meeting. A public hearing on the amended budget is scheduled for June 9. Timm said that during this hearing, officials will address community feedback, detail the reductions made to hit the tax cap, and specify which items will be cut under a contingency budget. Voters will decide on the revised plan in a June 16 revote.
“If the new budget we present to the public were to fail, we will need to reduce it further, in the amount of $945,789,” Timm said. “[Business Official] Laura [Rafferty] and I will provide some options with associated dollar amounts attached. Certainly some [cuts] will no doubt be unpopular.” Timm said any contingency decisions are the sole responsibility of the school board.
The spending plan voters rejected on Tuesday was more than $2 million higher than this year’s budget, a 5.34% increase that district officials attributed to rises in employee health premiums, transportation costs, and BOCES fees.
Turnout in this year’s budget vote was far higher than in recent years. A total of 890 voters cast ballots on the 2026-27 spending plan, more than double the turnout for either of the previous two budgets, both of which passed. The 2024-25 budget drew 391 votes, with 285 in favor and 106 opposed, while the 2025-26 budget drew 396 votes, with 294 in favor and 102 opposed. The surge came amid ongoing uncertainty surrounding district consolidation and in a year when the district asked voters to approve a budget above the district tax cap, raising the threshold for passage beyond the simple majority needed in the previous two years.
While the budget failed, voters approved the purchase of two 71-passenger school buses and three 35-passenger school buses totaling over $750,000, and elected incumbent Jim Griffin (541 votes) and newcomer Amie Buehler (516) to the board, over Brooke Brown (460).
The school board will release details on the June public hearing and budget revote after its meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 26, in the Stissing Mountain High School library.
Are you sick of high taxes? GET OUT AND VOTE!
Hard choices will have to be made, that is unfortunate, but we cannot keep going this route as our politicians drive people and the tax base out of the state leaving us to pick up the slack in the budget for fewer and fewer kids.
$47000 per student is too much. 9 students to every one teacher is too few. 3 buildings is too much.
And to all those that didn’t vote, why not?
I believe the school board did the town a service by failing to recognize the fiscal realities facing the district when it submitted a budget that exceeded the allowable state cap. As evidenced by the doubling of voter turnout, the proposal focused public attention on the steep decline in enrollment and the lack of commensurate savings one might expect as a result.
My guess is that a revised budget that meets the cap will pass with a simple majority; however, the eventual consolidation of facilities is inevitable. The sooner the board begins implementing that process, the better it will be for everyone.
The failure of the budget to obtain the needed supermajority was entirely predictable. There is a very well-established track record of votes in many other school districts in New York State in which virtually no school budget needing a supermajority to pass obtains one.
This vote reflected the school board, hoping against hope, that a small portion of the electorate (only 890 voters out of an estimated voting electorate of over 7,000 bothered to vote!) would vote to pass this. The school board must have known that a supermajority vote was highly unlikely, but the board irresponsibly declined to make the additional cuts necessary to present a budget within the tax cap. Now, the school board essentially has no choice but to do so or face a catastrophic set of cuts under a contingency budget. Let’s hope the school board finally faces up to its responsibility to present a budget with the necessary spending restraint that voters can endorse.
The restructuring of this year’s budget is only the beginning of a long, necessary and difficult process to achieve economies, which eventually will require consolidation of school operations into a single facility. The decline in student enrollment is the driving factor, and that is not going to change. Everyone needs to face up to the reality of that trend and takes steps accordingly, rather than stick their heads in the sand (as the current board did in this budget vote).
Well, if the new vote is on 6/17, I suggest the voters know whether or not our schools are meeting the cap or not!. Please watch and continue to vote. Let the school board be aware that they are subject to the voters voting!!!