Wainscott Officials Wonder What Motivated Budget Rejections -- but Have Some Ideas What They Are

In the wake of the vote that Wainscott School officials said could threaten the very existence of the school district — and the minuscule tax rates for residents that it protects — residents and administrators were left wondering why so many residents had chosen to oppose the spending plan.

The budget had proposed a nearly 50 percent increase in spending, a 66 percent increase in the tax levy, but comes after years of tax cuts by the district and still represents the lowest tax rate among property owners in the Town of East Hampton.

If, as School Board President David Eagan worried in a discussion last week, the district were forced to dissolve itself and consolidate with a neighboring school district like East Hampton, the assessments for Wainscott residents applied under the new school district’s taxing formula would be likely to drive up taxes substantially.

School Board members were left wondering if they had failed to represent the dire situation clearly, or explain the confluence of circumstances, largely beyond their control, that had led to the need for the large budget increase.

“Did we get parents out?” asked board member Kelly Anderson the day after the vote,

“We got the word out there — look at the turnout,” Eagan said, nodding to the historically large turnout to the polls at both the May vote and the June revote, which increased the number of votes against the budget. “We couldn’t have been clearer. We did the math for people. We told them exactly what was to come. It’s frustrating, because now they’re going find out what the consequences are, and it’s going to be painful.”

Eagan said he, personally, had heard two primary reasons from voters who he believed had voted against the budget. The first was an age-old concern by retired residents living on fixed incomes, he said, who blanched at the steep increase in spending and the tax hike. He said he’d tried to impress upon them that the circumstances were beyond the district’s control and that they would still be better off with the district having the financial solvency to operate as it needs to.

“I try to point out that in seven of the last 11 years, we gave tax decreases, and this idea of a consolidation study … Wainscott would be absorbed into East Hampton, their assessed valuation put into East Hampton, their tax bills are going to quadruple.”

Kelly Anderson said it was “shocking” that only one resident attended the public hearing on the amended budget after the first failed vote — and then the number of “no” votes increased in the second vote by two.

The other reason Eagan and other board members said they’d heard expressed by residents, was anger over the perceived reason for the spike in enrollment that led to the need for new spending: a sudden influx of new students to the district from the Cozy Cabins housing complex on Route 114, which some have presumed to be caused by illegally over-crowded living arrangements, with possibly more than one family living in the tiny cottages there.

School officials have said that they can tell by the enrollment addresses of the 20 new students that entered the district at the start of the 2022-23 school year that several who would appear to be from different families are registered under the same address.

Eagan said he’d heard that much of the anger from residents is directed at East Hampton Town, because of the perception that if the town enforced code requirements diligently, the number of new students would be reduced.

“It’s no secret to anyone that there are multiple families in some dwellings, and people are questioning that — they are angry about that, and they see it as they are paying for the town’s lack of enforcement,” Eagan said. “That anger is being misdirected at the school district, I think. We tried to diffuse that and ask them not to take it out in this vote, but I don’t think it worked. There’s a lot of anger over it, and it’s not going to dissipate.”

Parents who spoke this week echoed some of the thinking by school officials but also found fault in how the district has handled the budget and other situations.

Barry Raebeck, a teacher and Wainscott resident who served briefly as the superintendent of the Wainscott School District, agreed with Eagan’s sentiments, saying that some taxpayers in Wainscott feel as though the town is letting the need for affordable housing stand in the way of protecting Wainscott residents from a disruptive influx of new students. The town’s plans to build a 50-unit apartment complex in the district, and forecasts that it could contribute more than 30 new students to the district, have heightened the awareness of the issue.

“We need affordable housing and we need to have a way for people to live and work here, but the town has to be more creative in its solutions,” Raebeck said. “The doubling of a school population is extraordinary. It doesn’t seem like the town is very concerned and, in Wainscott, there is already a feeling that we get a lot problems — the airport, the pit, the Wainscott traffic light, the gun club — and very little in the way of solutions.”

Jameson Haight, a Wainscott School mother, said she thinks the School Board miscalculated in trying to justify the spending hike by spotlighting the surge in new students and its source — and placing the blame on housing issues.

“The mailings about when to come vote for the budget were also an anti-affordable housing message,” she said. “They may have realized too late that it did not work in their favor with the budget. They tried to separate them later on, but it didn’t work.”

Haight said there are also parents who feel students at the school are getting short-changed by the school’s limited offerings, and that the School Board has not been forthright about what options the district has for managing its program offerings in its yearning to maintain the quaint school, and low tax rates.

Ron Jawin, whose three children all attended the Wainscott School, also said that he has definitely heard discussion among some parents as to whether maintaining the school is in the best interests of Wainscott children anymore — and whether they would be better moving on to other districts sooner, perhaps after kindergarten.

Board members said that regardless of the reasoning for the objections from residents, they are intent on keeping the school operating and finding a way to financial solvency by the start of the new fiscal year next month.

“I’m trying to get over what happened,” Eagan said, “and focus on trying to keep this place operating.”