A nine-member board adopted the spending plan 5 to 4 in April after weeks of revision. Six candidates ran for three seats Tuesday at Liverpool Middle School, with polls open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Truth-check: Frank Mahoney, Editor-in-Chief. Edit: TBD. Design: TBD.
Know before your neighbors do
The Morning Signal hits your inbox at 6 AM with everything that happened overnight. Real incidents, real data, zero fluff.
The Liverpool Central School District put a $223 million spending plan in front of voters Tuesday that closes a $17 million shortfall by cutting about 78 positions, raising the tax levy 3.3 percent, and pulling $12.5 million from reserves. The Board of Education adopted the plan on a 5 to 4 vote on April 20, the narrowest margin allowed under the nine seat board, and only after multiple meetings of revision. Results were not yet posted on the district results page at press time. The official tally will appear at liverpool.k12.ny.us.
Liverpool is the largest school district in Onondaga County by enrollment, with 6,642 students across 13 schools, and its per pupil spending of $25,002 runs roughly $7,200 below the New York State median of $32,209. That gap matters here. The district is asking taxpayers in Clay and Salina to fund a slightly smaller program than they paid for last year while paying more for it.
Source: Liverpool CSD board presentations and CNY Central reporting, April 2026. Compiled by CNY Signal.
What passed, or failed
Two ballot items went to voters Tuesday. The 2026-27 operating budget was Proposition 1. A school bus and vehicle purchase proposition was Proposition 2. Polls ran from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Liverpool Middle School. The official district results page at liverpool.k12.ny.us did not have Tuesday night totals posted at press time. CNY Central and Spectrum News both noted Tuesday that Liverpool was one of the most closely watched votes in Central New York given the size of the staffing cuts.
If the budget had been defeated, the rules of the New York State Education Department are explicit and unforgiving. Under state law administered by NYSED, the board has two paths. It can put the same or a revised budget back to voters in a statewide revote that this year falls on June 17, 2026. Or it can move directly to a contingency budget. If voters reject a budget twice, the contingency is mandatory. There is no third vote. Under a contingency, by statute, the tax levy cannot exceed the prior year levy and the administrative component is capped, meaning a defeated revote in Liverpool would have frozen tax growth at zero and likely deepened the cuts now numbered at 78 positions.
That backdrop is why Tuesday mattered to current employees, retirees who still pay school taxes, and parents tracking whether their child’s classroom aide returns in September.
Who voted to put it on the ballot
The board itself was split. The 5 to 4 adoption vote on April 20 was reported by 570 WSYR as one of the most divided budget votes in recent district memory. Trustee Matt Jones, the New York State Assembly communications director who joined the board in July 2024, publicly described his vote as a reluctant yes, framing it as a choice between an imperfect budget and an unacceptable alternative. The breakdown of which four members voted no was not formally released by the district in publicly posted minutes at press time, though Trustee Jecenia Bresett was identified in coverage as a vocal critic of the lack of changes between the initial and final drafts.
The full board roster going into Tuesday, per the district’s own Meet the Board page: President Nicholas Blaney (licensed insurance broker, term ends 2028), Vice President Stacey Chilbert (term ends 2026), Jecenia Bresett (term ends 2026), Alexandra Gyder (technical trainer, SUNY Potsdam, term ends 2028), Matt Jones (Director of Communications, New York State Assembly, term ends 2027), Kimberly Martin (licensed care manager, UnitedHealthcare Group, term ends 2028), Dan McKeever (Assistant Professor of Finance at Binghamton University School of Management, term ends 2026), Kimberly Melnik (Special Education Teacher, term ends 2027), and John Solazzo (term ends 2027). Three of those nine seats, Chilbert, Bresett, and McKeever, were on the ballot Tuesday.
Who ran for the three seats
Six people filed for three seats. Only one incumbent ran. The five challengers reflected the unusually high stakes around staffing and security in this cycle. Profiles below are drawn from the candidates’ own statements at the CNY Central candidate forum.
- Jecenia Bresett. The only incumbent. Stay at home mother, former vocal critic of the budget process. Campaigned on transparency and what she called positive changes in district leadership.
- Dawn Curry-Clarry. Community advocate. Framed her platform as consensus building. Said the board needs to come together and find a way forward.
- Victoria R. Baratta. Long time observer of board meetings. Said she was finally doing something she should have done years ago, pitching herself as an inside reformer.
- Lindsay Giles, who appears on some filings as Lindsay Wiehl. An Onondaga County Sheriff’s Deputy. Centered her campaign on student safety and parent relationships.
- Elijah Micah Lee Curtis. A former Liverpool student. Built his platform on protecting teaching staff from the layoffs, telling the forum that the students of tomorrow should not lose their Mrs. Skipper of today.
- John Kritzer. Director of security for the Syracuse Housing Authority. Made school security the cornerstone of his campaign.
Three of the six would win three year terms starting in July. Two of the three open seats were held by trustees, Chilbert and McKeever, who did not seek reelection. The third was held by Bresett, the lone incumbent in the field. Winners and final tallies were not posted on the official district results page at press time.
What this means for a $150,000 home
Salina is the easier town to math out, because its assessed values run close to market value. In the town of Salina, the published Liverpool school tax rate for the current 2025-26 school year is $24.46 per $1,000 of assessed value. On a home assessed at $150,000, that produces a 2025-26 school tax bill of about $3,669 before STAR exemptions. A levy increase of 3.3 percent, applied at the district level, does not translate one to one into a 3.3 percent rate hike for any individual taxpayer, because the rate also moves with assessed value totals across the district. As a rough working estimate, however, a 3.3 percent lift on a $3,669 bill is roughly $121 a year, or about $10 a month, for a Salina homeowner at that assessment. Clay assesses at a fractional ratio and uses a different posted rate, so the dollar change there depends on the equalization ratio published by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Both towns share the same underlying levy hike.
For context on what that $121 buys per taxpayer, the district’s per pupil spending of $25,002 across 6,642 students works out to a total program cost of roughly $166 million in instruction alone. Spread across the district’s roughly 50,000 households in Clay and Salina, that is about $3,330 per household in instructional cost. The $121 average annual increase to a $150K Salina homeowner is, by that measure, about 3.6 percent of what each household already pays toward instruction. CNY Signal calculation based on figures from the district and PublicSchoolReview.
Liverpool’s 3.3 percent levy hike for 2026-27 is the largest in five years and outpaces neighboring district increases as estimated from publicly posted tax cap data. Neighbor lines pending official district rate confirmation.
What the $223M actually buys
New York requires every school district to present its budget in a three part format: program, administrative, and capital. Program is everything that touches a classroom or a student bus seat. Administrative is central office, legal, and management. Capital is buildings, debt service, and tax certiorari. Liverpool has not yet posted its final adopted three part split in machine readable form on its website, but historical splits give a reliable approximation.
In the district’s most recent published three part breakdown from the 2022-23 cycle, the capital component was 17.09 percent and the administrative component was 8.28 percent, leaving program at about 74.6 percent. Applying those ratios to the $223 million 2026-27 figure produces this approximation:
- Program (instruction, athletics, transportation, special education, food service): about $166 million. This is where the 78 position cuts fall, including teaching assistants, classroom aides, bus drivers, and teachers. The district has cited rising special education and transportation costs as the principal drivers of the gap.
- Administrative (central office, principals’ offices, legal, insurance): about $18.5 million. Under state contingency rules, this is the component that gets capped if voters defeat the budget twice.
- Capital (building debt service, repairs, technology infrastructure): about $38 million. Liverpool voters separately reauthorized a capital project in a previous vote that the district has cited in board presentations.
The bus and vehicle purchase question on Proposition 2 sits outside the main operating budget but funds the rolling stock that the program component pays drivers to operate. A no on Proposition 2 without a no on Proposition 1 forces the district to delay bus replacements and stretch existing vehicles past their planned retirement.
How this stacks up against neighboring districts
Liverpool’s 3.3 percent levy increase lands above almost every other large Onondaga County district on the same May 19 ballot. North Syracuse, Baldwinsville, and West Genesee each filed tax cap notices well under three percent for 2026-27, according to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance tax base growth factor tables. Liverpool used its full available cap room. That is a substantive choice. The state’s tax cap formula, even at the full allowance, did not produce enough new revenue to avoid layoffs. The district covered the remaining gap with $12.5 million from fund balance, which by definition is one time money and cannot be repeated next year without depleting reserves further.
The district’s own per pupil spending of $25,002 already trails the New York State median of $32,209 by more than $7,000. By that benchmark, Liverpool is not a high spending district that needs trimming. It is a below median spending district choosing to trim further because property tax growth, capped by state law, has not kept pace with rising special education and transportation costs.
What happens next
Three scenarios were on the table Tuesday night, each with a different downstream path.
Scenario one, the budget passes. The 78 staffing cuts proceed as adopted. The 3.3 percent levy hike books into 2026-27 tax bills mailed in September. The three new board members are sworn in in July for terms ending in 2029. Reserves drop by $12.5 million, leaving fund balance materially thinner heading into 2027-28, when the same structural gap returns without the one time cushion.
Scenario two, the budget is defeated but the bus proposition passes. Under NYSSBA guidance on the state revote process, the board would have until June 17, 2026, the statewide revote date, to either run the same budget back to voters or revise it. Historically, districts that defeat a budget often see the second vote pass at a higher rate. If the board chooses to revise downward, the cuts deepen. If it puts the same number back up, it has 60 days to make its case to a now skeptical electorate.
Scenario three, the budget is defeated twice. If a June 17 revote fails, Liverpool would be required by statute to adopt a contingency budget. The administrative component would be capped under state formula. The tax levy could not exceed the 2025-26 level, meaning zero growth, which on a $223 million plan would force tens of millions of dollars in additional cuts beyond the 78 positions already identified. Districts cannot go for a third vote.
Either way, the political fallout is set. Three new trustees join a board that has been working through one of the most divisive budget cycles in recent district memory. The architects of the 5 to 4 yes coalition, including Trustee Jones, face an electorate that just registered an opinion in real time on whether the trade off, 78 jobs and a 3.3 percent levy hike for a roughly flat program, was the right one.
Trustee Chilbert and Trustee McKeever leave the board on June 30. Their replacements take office on July 1. The first budget meeting of the new fiscal year will be the test of whether voter intent on Tuesday translates into board direction.
CNY Signal will publish the certified results, including individual candidate vote totals and the budget margin, as soon as they are posted by the district at liverpool.k12.ny.us. This story will be updated with confirmed numbers.
Have a tip or a correction? Email [email protected]. CNY Signal does not publish anonymous claims about named individuals.
