Budgets pass; 2 incumbents ousted in Bedford

BCSD and KLSD budgets both passed by identical lopsided ratios in Tuesday vote

By JEFF MORRIS

Katonah-Lewisboro

There were no surprises in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, as all three propositions passed, and with three school board candidates running for three seats the outcome was not in doubt, though there were some notable details in the vote totals amid a drastically reduced voter turnout.

Proposition 1, the budget itself, was approved by a vote of 744 yes and 309 no. That’s a total of 1,053 votes cast, with 71 percent in favor and 29 percent opposed. The $127,410,469 budget is $3,091,707, or 2.49 percent, more than last year’s, with a tax levy increase of 3.29 percent , which is at the allowable tax cap.

Proposition 2, to apply existing funds from the 2024-25 budget to electrical infrastructure upgrades for vehicle charging, passed 826 to 226, or 79 percent to 21 percent. Proposition 3, allowing the district to qualify for an additional 10 percent in state aid for an energy performance contract, passed 807 to 244, or 77 percent to 23 percent. Oddly, while both of the additional propositions had no tax impact and so received more favorable votes than did the budget, which involved a tax increase, the third one, which would potentially mean more money from the state, received 19 fewer votes than the second.

This year’s results are consistent with nearly all the district’s budget votes going back seven years; last year, the budget passed 70 percent to 30 percent , and it passed 73 percent to 27 percent in 2022, 72 percent to 28 percent in 2021, and 77 percent to 23 percent in both 2020 and 2019. The outlier was 2023, when the budget’s passing margin, while still sizable, was closer, at 63 percent to 37 percent. 

The big difference between this year and prior years was a substantially lower voter turnout. The 1,053 votes on Proposition 1 compare to 1,696 votes in 2024, and that was a big drop from the 3,264 votes cast in 2023, as well as lower than the 2,251 budget votes in 2022. This year and last mark a reversal of what had, in 2023, seemed to be a trend of steadily increasing voter participation. And what previously appeared to be an abnormally low turnout of only 1,201 in 2021, and the 1,505 votes cast in 2019, were still higher than this year’s total. (The highest turnout in recent years, 4,994 votes for and against the budget in 2020, can be attributed to everyone receiving a mail ballot that year due to COVID-19.)

The number of votes cast for the school board was also down. Last year’s top vote-getters, Barbara Williams and Marjorie Schiff, received 1,149 votes and 1,115 respectively. This year’s highest vote recipients among the three school board candidates were Carolyn Snell, with 825, and Arwen Thomas Belloni, with 790. Both were elected to three-year terms. The only incumbent running, Jon Poffenberger, who had just been elected last year to fill the final year of an unexpired term, gained a full three-year term with 766 votes — though that was down from his 2024 total of 816.

Bedford Central

Though the budget passed with 73 percent of the vote, an intriguing scenario played out in the school board election. With seven candidates running for four seats, two incumbents were reelected, receiving the highest vote totals, while two other incumbents were defeated, receiving the least votes of the seven.

Board President Gilian Klein came in first with 1,249 votes, with incumbent Blakely Lowry right behind her with 1,193. The next two finishers were newcomers: Prasad Krishnan, with 1,082, and Leo Sposato, with 971.

The vote totals mattered because the fourth-place finisher, Sposato, will fill the final year of an unexpired term vacated by Kristine Stoker, who resigned last year. He will take office immediately; Klein and Lowry will remain on the board and be sworn into new terms in July, while Krishnan will not join them until then.

Sposato replaces Robert Mazurek, who was appointed by the board last year to fill Stoker’s seat after his own term, for which he had chosen not to run again, expired. He decided to run again this year but came in sixth in the voting, with 819, outpolling only fellow incumbent Amal Shady, who garnered 743 votes. Shady had frequently been absent from board meetings. Rounding out the voting was Eric Florio, who came in fifth with 935 votes.

Teams running for school board have had mixed results. When they were first elected to the board in 2022, Lowry and Shady had run as a team, while Klein ran with a different team of three candidates, from which she was the only winner. This time, Klein, Lowry and Shady ran as a four-person team with Krishnan.

Meanwhile, the $160,905,500 2025-26 budget received 1,438 votes for and 587 against — a 71 percent to 29 percent winning percentage. Last year, the budget passed 798 to 293, a slightly better 73 percent to 27 percent, but this year there were nearly twice as many votes cast. 

The budget is $5,080,500 higher than last year, or a 3.26 percent increase, with a tax levy increase of 2.99 percent, which is below the allowable tax cap of 3.44 percent.

Trivia buffs may note that this year, the budget votes totaled 2025.