OBSERVER Photo by Andrew David Kuczkowski Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz gestures during his presentation on the potential savings of merging districts, not schools, of North Collins and Eden at the North Collins Library. The merger would allow the taxpayers to have only one superintendent and administration on the bill of two individual school systems. The estimated savings was around $177,725 total for both districts.

NORTH COLLINS — Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz pitched the concept of consolidating Eden and North Collins school districts without impacting each of their respective buildings other than having only one superintendent, one director of finance and other administrative positions. The county executive estimated that the tax bases would save $177,725 in administrative savings, or $88,862 per tax base.

However, each school board disagrees with that assumption, questioned the numbers.

Poloncarz had an hour-and-a-half presentation at the North Collins Library earlier this week explaining the benefits to having one district and two separate, respective schools in each township. The issue he presented was the decline in enrollment. He compared 2006-07 to 2016-17’s numbers for Erie County schools. North Collins was down 13.5 percent (from 686 to 585) and Eden’s was more steep at 23.9 percent (from 1,759 to 1,339).

The county executive explained that these administrative roles are costly to the small districts and schools like North Collins and Eden have a high cost-per-student ratio, which coincides with high taxes for smaller tax bases.

In one chart, the highest cost-per-student for a Erie County school (even though it’s physically located in Chautauqua County) is Silver Creek. The gross administrative costs, as Poloncarz presented, is $823,435 and per student that was $795.59. North Collins is in second with a smaller overall cost at $458,999, but per student, the number is at $784.61. Gowanda was in third with the overall cost being $838,219 and per student being $704.98.

The state mandates that each district has one superintendent and each school (a high school and middle school being one apiece and a junior/senior high school being just one) having one principal. If Eden and North Collins combine districts and not schools, Poloncarz sees initial positives as the taxpayers will only need to support one administrative group.

North Collins Board of Education President Heather Locking asked during the question and answer session, “Can you tell me what model or what positions you would cut to get that savings? You mentioned duplications.”

Poloncarz’s assistant said you would go down to one superintendent, one fiscal officer (finacial director), the assistant superintendent and the outside auditors.

“I did watch your presentation and you stated that every district had a chief financial officers, had an assistant superintendent. We’ve already done significant cost-saving (measures) in North Collins as far as our admin costs,” Locking said. “We don’t have a chief financial officer; we merged that with superintendent position. We don’t have an assistant superintendent position. So, if you make a larger district, you’d be creating an assistant superintendent and be paying for a chief financial officer that we don’t have.”

Many asked during the question and answer a similar theme: If we do this, is there a promised savings?

During the presentation, Poloncarz said for the first five years, the districts are offered “incentive operating aid” for the first 14 years. In the first five, new districts are eligible for a 40 percent increase in state aid and additional aid is reduced by 4 percent each year that follows until after the 15 years are up. Also, there will be an additional 30 percent of funding for new capital projects in the first 10 years.

Though when he responded to the question after the presentation, the answer was as confident or secure for benefits to the area.

“I am sitting here and I hear people saying, ‘How can you know for certain, down to the penny, that this is what is going to happen?’ and my response is that it is up to the people for what they want,” Poloncarz said. “If they decide we are going to merge because we are getting too small or the costs are driving us to the point where we are going to close the school district then it’s going to be up to the people to say what it’s going to look like.”

According to seethroughny.net, the Eden Superintendent Sandy Anzalone (who is listed on the website as Sandra A. Keith-Anzalone) makes $146,249 in the 2017-18 school year, while North Collins Superintendent Scott Taylor is listed to make $146,491.