VOORHEESVILLE — With no hard state aid figures available from the governor’s office, school officials here are pressing on with next year’s budget draft, and calling for three bond proposals for previously expected projects.

“It’s really early, and, frankly, I’m not worried,” said Sarita Winchell, the interim school business official at a school board budget meeting Monday. The projected shortfall in revenues under the tax-levy cap for the $23 million budget is a relatively small $71,000, she said.

“It’s like a game of chicken — who’s going to run off the road first? I hope it’s Andrew Cuomo,” she said of the governor, whose plan to withhold $1.1 billion in increased state aid unless the legislature approves, among other reforms, stricter teacher evaluation guidelines has rallied many educators against him.

Voorheesville’s proposed $23 million budget is $334,000 greater than this year’s budget.

 “We have to start with what our revenues are and what the tax formula is going to be,” Winchell said of preparing the 2015 district budget.

According to a formula set by the state, Voorheesville’s tax-levy cap is $16,748,414, Winchell said. She calculated a preliminary budget using $2,000 less than this number for the tax levy, she said.

“We have to borrow money in June,” Winchell said. School districts across the state have borrowed in order to cover costs before they receive Foundation Aid from the state that is expected in early September, but due to districts, by law, by Sept. 30 at the latest.

“We’re giving ourselves a little bit of an edge there,” Winchell said of the $2,000 less than the levy amount. The district is not yet sure how much will need to be borrowed, she said. The tax levy amount proposed is up $308,000 from last year, she said.

Winchell estimated that the district may use $600,000 of its appropriated fund balance for the 2015 budget, but the funds can only be replaced with surplus funds or unspent revenue.

State law allows a district to have up to 4 percent of its budget in a fund balance, and the state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli would like to see 3 percent. Earlier this year he released a report analyzing the fiscal health of public school districts across New York, with the lower the score, the better; higher scores indicated fiscal stress. Voorheesville was one of only a few districts in the state to earn the lowest score, a zero.

“Once used, it’s gone,” Winchell said of spending the fund balance. Districts that have used larger amounts of appropriated fund balances to meet their budgets one year had difficulty meeting them in later years, since fund balances were depleted, she said.

“Keeping that a nice, steady number is really important,” she said.

Winchell said that the projected cost for the teacher retirement system is down 4 percent, or $259,000; school districts are paying a smaller share because the stock market did well.

“That’s really what’s saving us this year,” she said. Teacher retirements will also reduce the budget, she said.

New regulations for districts to meet the needs of English as a New Language students, and an increase in special-education costs, caused increases in other portions of the proposed budget, she said.

The district’s old debt is declining, Winchell said, but she expects Voorheesville to take on new debt.

Three props

Voters will likely see a bus proposition to replace two school buses at a combined cost of $230,000. The school board voted Monday to retire two buses that were purchased in 2003. The proposed new buses could be purchased with a five-year bond that aligns with state aid, Winchell said.

Winchell said that the district must wipe out its $100,000 school lunch fund deficit using money from the general fund and has proposed a bond vote.

“Kids weren’t buying because they didn’t want to eat what was out there,” Winchell said. Voorheesville opted out of the federal- and state-subsidized school lunch program when healthier meals were mandated years ago.

Once federal regulations on meals were loosened, Winchell said, the district re-entered the program.

“It’s never been something that was cost-to-benefit positive,” said Superintendent Teresa Thayer Snyder of funding school lunches.

The deficit is cumulative over several years, Winchell said, and would not be repeated on a large scale.

“Our goal is to break even, not to be making money, but not to be losing it,” said school board President Timothy Blow.

“We’re not alone in this,” Winchell said of districts with lunch program deficits.

A third proposition the board may offer voters is the repair or replacement of the footbridge at the elementary school. Winchell said that the district consulted two engineering companies — Ryan Biggs Clark Davis, of Clifton Park, and The Chazen Companies, of Troy — about the bridge. Repair or replacement will require the removal of the bridge and repair of its abutments, and will trigger a state environmental review, which must be completed before a voter referendum, Winchell said.

Costs would include that for rigging, trucking, and abutment repair, and depend on the number of windows on the bridge canopy to be replaced, she said. Additionally, costs for a wooden bridge could be $142,000, while galvanized steel could run up to $162,000, she said.

New construction would be eligible for state aid, Winchell said.

“We have money for both in the capital reserve, and in the repair reserve,” she said. “We get no aid for a repair.”