MASSENA — When voters head to the polls next week to cast their ballots on their school budgets, only one in the 33 school districts in Lewis, Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties will ask them to approve a spending plan that exceeds the property tax cap.

Beaver River is asking residents to approve a 2017-18 budget that carries a tax levy increase of 2 percent. The district’s tax levy limit is 0.42 percent.

However, 16 school districts in the three-county region are putting up budgets that increase property taxes as high as the property tax cap allows. That includes 13 of the 17 St. Lawrence County school districts and three of the 11 Jefferson County school districts, according to a report from the Empire Center for Public Policy, which said the increase comes despite lower enrollment numbers in many cases.

St. Lawrence County schools that are proposing budgets at their tax cap limit include Canton, Clifton-Fine, Colton-Pierrepont, Gouverneur, Hammond, Hermon-Dekalb, Heuvelton, Lisbon, Madrid-Waddington, Ogdensburg, Parishville-Hopkinton, Potsdam and St. Lawrence.

Jefferson County schools with budgets that are at the tax cap limit include Lyme, South Jefferson and Watertown.

But they’re not alone, according to officials with the Empire Center for Public Policy. In a report released on Friday, they said 313 of the 669 school districts in New York are seeking voter approval for spending plans that increase property taxes as high as the property tax cap allows. They based their information on the annual Property Tax Report Card compiled by the state Department of Education.

“A total of 313 school districts have proposed budgets setting property tax levies as high as the cap will allow — indicating that property taxes would have increased significantly more had the cap not been in place to deter them,” they said in the report.

Officials said the state school districts, not including the “Big 5 city school districts, together expect to increase school property taxes $355 million, or 1.7 percent, while forecasting a decrease in enrollment of 4,352, or 0.3 percent. More than half of the districts — 346 total — anticipate lower enrollment in 2017-18, with 19 districts predicting a decline of more than 5 percent.

“New York’s school districts are receiving record-high levels of aid from Albany to educate fewer students, and our school taxes are still climbing,” Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center said in a statement. “Albany’s fixation on steering more state funds to schools isn’t translating into property tax relief. The tax cap has succeeded in slowing the growth of taxes, but there’s more to be done to set New York on the right track.”

Budget votes will be held Tuesday.

© 2017 Watertown Daily Times