NOVA SCOTIA – A forgotten finding was confirmed as such around 9:40 p.m. Tuesday night, when 75.2% of voters in the Voorheesville school district approved a budget of $ 27 million for the 2021-2022 school year.

Outgoing school board members James Coffin and Robert Samson will return to the board with new four-year terms after facing no opposition.

At Voorheesville Public Library, Marielle McKasty-Stagg beat Azam Khan by a margin of almost 3 t0-1 for a five-year term, while the $ 1.2 million budget for next year does was not voted on by residents.

Only 493 ballots were cast this year; 20 were absent.

Last year, with three school board seats open and no in-person votes allowed due to the pandemic, 1,600 mail-in ballots were cast. The vote count required a seven-and-a-half-hour manual count that took place over two days; the Albany County Elections Board has not shared its voting machines with the district due to an impending primary.

The 493 votes cast this year were one-third of the number cast last year, 1,600, an increase of one-third from the 1,210 people who voted in 2019. While in 2018, 655 votes cast; in 2017, just over 500 voted; in 2016, 966 voted; 766 voted in 2015; and in 2014, 590 votes were cast.

More than 75 percent of residents voted to approve the school budget of $ 26,954,451 for next year – the final total was 370 in favor versus 122 against.

The $ 26.95 million spending plan is up about 3.58% from this year and comes with a 2.72% increase in property taxes from around 18 , $ 8 million this year to about $ 19.3 million next year.

Only once since 2010 – 2013 and 57.4 percent – made less than 60 percent of Voorheesville voters approve a school budget. Five times since 2010 – 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2018 – between 60% and 70% of voters approved school budgets, while other spending plans were adopted with over 70% approval.

Voters also approved, by 382 votes to 111, $ 261,000 for the purchase of buses.

In addition, residents approved the transfer of $ 500,000 from an old capital reserve fund to a new one by a vote of 373 to 113.

At the library, McKasty-Stagg received 307 votes to Khan’s 105; there were eight written votes. The seat was vacant because Bryan Richmond, chair of the library board, was limited by the library’s constitution to a maximum of two consecutive terms.

Residents were unable to approve the library’s $ 1.2 million budget for 2021-2022 because it failed to increase property taxes for next year.

Library director Sarah Clark previously told The Enterprise State Education Law that an annual budget vote for libraries is unnecessary because once the spending plan has been approved by residents, it is “Considered as an annual appropriation until amended by another vote”. according to the law itself.

This will likely be the new normal, Clark said in early May: if there is no tax increase, the budget will not be put to a public vote, but if a tax increase is needed, homeowners will be asked to increase. their taxes.