Five Days Out: The $122.5 Million Question Fayetteville-Manlius Voters Will Answer At Wellwood On May 19
On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., voters in the Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District will walk into Wellwood Middle School at 700 South Manlius Street, take a ballot, and decide on four separate items that together will set the largest single line item in their property-tax bill for the year ahead. The proposed budget total is $122,496,620, the document adopted by the F-M Board of Education on April 14 and reaffirmed at the May 11 public hearing held at Eagle Hill Middle School. That figure carries a 3.12 percent tax-levy increase. The district says that increase is exactly at its calculated levy limit, which means a simple majority will pass it.
The shorter version: under New York’s school-budget law, F-M did not exceed the tax cap. The longer version, the one that gets buried inside a one-page budget newsletter, is the line every property owner needs to read before driving to Wellwood: for a Town of Manlius property, the district estimates an annual tax increase of 58 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. On a home assessed at $300,000, that works out to a yearly increase of $174. On a $450,000 home, it is $261. Those numbers are the district’s own published estimate, not a third-party calculation.
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What Voters Will Decide
The May 19 ballot contains four distinct questions, each requiring its own yes or no vote: the operating budget, two library propositions, and a vehicle-purchase proposition. The district describes them as legally separate questions, meaning a voter can support the operating budget and reject the library propositions, or vice versa. Three Board of Education seats are also on the ballot.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 14 hours later at 9 p.m. The single polling site is the gymnasium at Wellwood Middle School, 700 South Manlius Street, Fayetteville, NY 13066. There is no early voting for school-district elections in New York; absentee and early-mail ballot requests must already be on file with the district clerk by the statutory deadlines.
The Budget By The Numbers
The $122,496,620 budget for the 2026-27 school year breaks down across three components, as published in the district’s budget newsletter. The program component, which covers instruction, salaries, benefits, transportation, special education, and athletics, accounts for 71 percent of total spending. The capital component covers facilities, debt service, and grounds. The administrative component covers central office and supervisory functions.
On the revenue side, the tax levy supports 63.24 percent of the budget. State aid covers 31.64 percent. The remaining balance comes from reserves, fund balance applied, and other miscellaneous revenue. The tax-levy increase of 3.12 percent is the maximum allowed under the state’s tax-cap formula without requiring a 60 percent supermajority vote. By staying exactly at the cap, the district preserves the simple-majority threshold for passage.
F-M Superintendent Magda C. Parvey is the district’s public face for the budget. Dr. Parvey’s name appears on every formal budget communication, including the April 14 board adoption notice and the May 11 public hearing materials.
Three Board Seats. Two Candidates. The Write-In Variable
Three seats on the F-M Board of Education are up for election, each carrying a three-year term beginning July 1, 2026. Only two candidates submitted nominating petitions by the April 20 filing deadline. The third seat will go to whichever write-in candidate receives the highest number of recorded votes, the district has confirmed.
The two candidates on the printed ballot are Robert J. Spencer and Kristen Purcell. Spencer is a first-time candidate and an 11-year district resident who serves as a supervising administrative law judge for the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and European studies from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and a juris doctor from Boston College Law School. He has volunteered as a youth-soccer coach in F-M for 10 years. His wife has been a Spanish teacher in the district for 19 years, the district’s own candidate brief notes.
Kristen Purcell is seeking a second term on the board. Also an 11-year district resident, Purcell is director of the Central New York and Oswego County Teacher Center. She holds three Syracuse University credentials: a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in elementary education, and a certificate of advanced study in school building and district administration. Purcell currently chairs the board’s Community Relations Committee and sits on the Mental Health Task Force.
The write-in dynamic is unusual but not unprecedented in F-M. Whoever pulls the most write-in votes for the third seat wins it. There is no minimum threshold. A small block of organized voters could elect a candidate with as few as several dozen votes if the field is otherwise scattered.
The Two Library Propositions And The Vehicle Question
The Manlius Library and the Fayetteville Free Library each have a funding proposition on the same May 19 ballot. The propositions are listed as separate yes-or-no votes inside the school-district election because both libraries are funded through district taxation under New York Education Law Section 259. The libraries publish their own financial documentation; the district relays the propositions onto the ballot but does not control library budgets. Voters who use either library directly are the most likely to weigh in.
The vehicle-purchase proposition asks voters to authorize spending up to $1,529,830 to purchase eight vehicles: one diesel full-size bus with wheelchair capability, one diesel full-size bus with luggage compartment, four standard diesel full-size buses, and two gasoline-powered vans. The vans replace current Suburbans used for student transportation; those Suburbans, the district said, would be repurposed by the maintenance department. The state would reimburse the district for approximately 74 percent of the vehicle cost over a five-year period, which means the net cost to local taxpayers is closer to $400,000 spread over the same window.
The district was explicit about the alternative: if rejected, the district would continue to operate its oldest buses, which carry rising maintenance costs and shorter useful life. The proposition is also positioned ahead of New York’s electric-bus purchase requirement that begins July 1, 2027, subject to an anticipated waiver extension.
What Three Hundred Thousand Dollars Means In Manlius
How F-M Stacks Up Against The Neighbors
F-M does not sit in a vacuum. Neighboring Jamesville-DeWitt and North Syracuse face their own budget votes on the same date. The pattern across Onondaga County school budgets in 2026-27 has been to come in at or near the calculated tax-cap limit, which avoids the supermajority threshold. F-M’s 3.12 percent levy is consistent with that pattern. Comparisons to J-D and North Syracuse will be available after each district publishes its post-vote results on May 20.
Why The Capital Project Debt Matters Now
The F-M High School capital project debt service is woven into the same operating budget. The district structured the capital improvement bond to ride beneath the tax-cap threshold, but rising interest rates and ongoing utility and labor costs are squeezing the program component year over year. The 2026-27 budget preserves current programs and staffing levels, the board said in its April 14 adoption resolution, but does so partly by drawing on reserves. That drawdown is sustainable in the short term and unsustainable in the long term, which is why next year’s budget conversation is already informally underway inside the board’s finance committee.
Turnout History And What To Expect Tuesday
F-M’s school-budget turnout has historically run between 1,200 and 2,000 voters when budgets pass without controversy, climbing higher in years where the levy exceeded the cap or where contested board elections drove engagement. With three seats and only two candidates filed, the write-in dynamic will likely lift turnout above the lower end of that range, particularly if any community group organizes around a specific write-in name.
For voters who want to read the full budget document before Tuesday, the district publishes it at fmschools.org under the Budget and Finance tab. The board’s April 14 adoption notice and the May 11 public hearing materials are linked from the same page. Voters with questions about absentee or early-mail ballots should call the district clerk directly during business hours.
Sources And Verification
- F-M Board adopts proposed budget; community vote scheduled for May 19: https://www.fmschools.org/board-adopts-proposed-budget-community-vote-scheduled-for-may-19/
- F-M Budget hearing set for May 11; budget vote is May 19: https://www.fmschools.org/budget-hearing-set-for-may-11-budget-vote-is-may-19/
- F-M Two running for board of education; three seats available: https://www.fmschools.org/two-running-for-board-of-education-three-seats-available/
- F-M May 19 ballot to include vehicle purchase proposition: https://www.fmschools.org/may-19-ballot-to-include-vehicle-purchase-proposition/
- F-M Budget and Finance hub: https://www.fmschools.org/budget-finance/
- Manlius Library budget vote announcement: https://manliuslibrary.org/2026/05/f-m-school-district-libraries-budget-vote-is-may-19th/
- CNY Central, May 2026 coverage of the contested write-in race: https://cnycentral.com/news/local/fayetteville-manlius-voters-face-3-school-board-seats-but-only-2-official-candidates
- Photos: Manlius Academy Park Bandshell by Doncram via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). F-M District Office via Wikipedia.
