CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - In the lowest turnout in years, Katonah-Lewisboro School District residents easily approved a modest budget increase and cast votes for the only three candidates for three school board seats.
Going to the polls on Tuesday (May 20), voters agreed, 744 to 309, with a proposed $3 million rise, to $127.4 million, in the cost of educating the district’s nearly 3,000 students.
Voters also re-elected Jon Poffenberger and asked Carolyn Snell and Arwen Thomas Belloni to represent them as new board trustees. All were elected to three-year terms.
School Superintendent Ray Blanch thanked district voters for their support.
The 2025-26 school budget—$127,410,469—increases spending by $3,091,707 and hikes the property-tax levy to $109,490,423. At $3,483,316. It’s the maximum levy increase state tax-cap limits allow.
Specific local tax-rate impacts in the four towns from which KLSD draws students will not be known until later in the year. Increases next year are estimated as 0.27 percent in the Katonah section of Bedford, 4.26 percent in Lewisboro and 6.64 percent in Pound Ridge. North Salem was expected to see a drop of 4.10 percent.
With only three candidates seeking three school board seats, there was little doubt about the outcome. Poffenberger, elected last May to fill a one-year vacancy, drew 766 votes. Snell, a Katonah resident, received the most votes with 825 and Belloni of South Salem 790.
Voters also acted on a pair of ballot questions.
Proposition 2, asking for approval to transfer $750,000 in cash on-hand to finance electrical infrastructure upgrades, passed, 826 to 226.
Proposition 3, approved by a vote of 807 to 244, qualifies KLSD for additional state aid as it pursues a contract for solar power with Honeywell.
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