The Westbury School District's Community Relations office recently mailed a copy of the district's bulletin to every household within the district, advising of a proposed plan to increase spending for the 2000-2001 fiscal year.

After providing the educators' arguments as to why we need an approximate 14 percent increase in taxes, we are told that it will cost an additional $40 per month for the average homeowner.

There is the usual debate about the need and the accuracy of such a large expenditure - I'm sure, by now, many of you have heard or read about it. It's not my purpose in this letter to join the chorus of opposition to this spending plan based on whether we really need all these additional resources. My purpose is to calculate the real cost to each taxpayer.

A brief word about the real cost of anything you buy: In the financial community there is a concept referred to as the opportunity cost of your spending decision. In other words, what else could you have done with that money? For the purpose of this discussion, we're going to look at the real cost of an additional $40 per month expenditure with a long-term view of 20 years - school taxes, once approved, rarely go down, only up. Taking any financial calculator that will do compound interest calculations and plugging in the monthly payment of $40 for 240 months (20 years x 12) at 10 percent interest (the rate equivalent to the average return, for the past 50+ years, on the S&P 500 Index, the benchmark measure used by most investors) the answer is $30,012. In other words, if, instead of paying an additional tax of $40 per month, you invested this same amount in any S&P 500 index mutual fund for this same period of time, you would have accumulated $30,012 - your real cost of a $40 per month expenditure. This is not an opinion - calculators don't give opinions, they give you the cold hard facts.

As taxpayers, the real decision we are asked to make is: do we each spend $30,012 of our future wealth on this proposed spending plan?

This vote will impact your personal wealth and our community's property values for a long time to come. You need to participate and exercise your civic right and duty. Here's what I recommend that you do: First, be sure that you are registered to vote. If you voted in the last general election, you are considered registered. Next, mark your calendar for Tuesday, May 16 between 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to vote on whether you want to spend $30,012 for this additional spending plan.

Final Important Step - Help get the word out. Make two or more copies of this letter and give it to your neighbors, friends and acquaintances in our school district and, just as important, ask them to exercise their civic right and duty and do the same. Or, you can call two or more people and explain to them why they need to vote on May 16 and ask them to do the same. Incidentally, it doesn't matter if they own their home or rent (house or apartment) they are entitled to vote. Remind them that if these additional taxes get approved, either their bank or mortgage company is going to extract a higher payment from them to cover the additional taxes or their landlord will have to raise their rent to pay the additional taxes.

Frank Morrone