Under an austerity budget, the Manhasset School District is prohibited from allowing public use of its clay tennis courts unless it receives full payment in advance to cover the identifiable costs necessary to maintain them. Identifiable costs in this instance are related to supplies and salary for the groundskeeper that works on the clay courts every day. After conducting a comprehensive study of the costs related to maintaining the clay courts and subtracting costs directly related to the Manhasset Middle School tennis teams' use of the courts for eight weeks per year, it was determined that the remaining identifiable costs the district would need to raise in order to allow public usage is $8,000 for the period of July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2005.

Due to the defeat of the budget revote on June 17 and the community's desire to continue utilizing the clay courts, expressed during the Manhasset Board of Education's Reorganization meeting on July 1, the board attempted to facilitate the reopening of the courts in a timely matter. In order to make the courts accessible as soon as possible, the Board has decided to sell permits to the community at $100 per person. As soon as the school district has received payments from 40 people, the tennis courts will be reopen for a length of time to be determined by how quickly the 40 permits are sold. This $4,000 will be used to allow the community to use the courts for the first half of the school year. The district will give the community the same opportunity to purchase permits for the second half of the school year.

With the school district operating on summer hours, the board realizes that not all interested parties would be able to make it to the school to purchase a permit. Therefore, Manhasset Sporting Goods has offered to sell the permits and submit the money to the school district, which will hold the funds in a special revenue account where all expenditures necessary to operate the clay tennis courts will be drawn from. Manhasset Sporting Goods is located at 580 Plandome Road. If you have any questions regarding permits for the clay tennis courts, please contact Stanley Germain, interim assistant superintendent for business, at 627-4400, ext. 3040, for more information.

"Unfortunately, under an austerity budget we are prevented from providing the public with usage of our facilities unless they pay the identifiable costs related to that usage upfront," stated Dr. Lawrence Bozzomo. "We are doing everything we can to make our facilities available to the public as quickly as possible. However, our first priority is the education of our children and we need to make sure that we have efficiently and effectively addressed the areas in the budget related to academics before turning our attention to outside use of facilities."