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Commack rejects bussing cuts
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Commack voters Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a plan to shrink student busing service to slow tax rate growth.
By a nearly 3 to 1 margin, residents shot down a proposition that would have doubled the distance from school facilities at which the Commack School District must provide bussing for students. Of the 2,125 votes cast Thursday at Commack middle and high schools, 1,573 opposed the plan many of them parents whose children would have lost bussing.
The plan would have saved Commack taxpayers collectively around $1.1 million annually, reducing the 3.85 percent tax levy increase included in the 2009-10 budget approved by voters in May to a 2.85 percent hike. The average Commack homeowner would have paid $83 less per year in school property taxes.
Under the failed proposal, children in grades kindergarten through second would have had to live more than a half mile from their school in order to qualify for district bussing. The current minimum is a quarter mile. The minimum distance would have increased from a half mile to a mile for students in grades three through eight, and from one to two miles for high schoolers. Students who must cross a four-lane road — i.e. Indian Head Road, Commack Road or Jericho Turnpike — to travel to school would have continued to receive bussing regardless of their home's distance from the facility, according to the district.
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