RIPLEY — A newly discovered windfall in Ripley Central School District’s budget means residents will not see any tax increase for the coming school year.

Ripley Superintendent William Caldwell wrote in a letter that is going out to all taxpayers: “As we were closing our 2018-2019 budget, we learned that we had received an extra $70,000 as part of our New York State aid package. This extra aid was unexpected and had not been on our original aid report.”

Caldwell said the district contacted the state budget office which confirmed that the funds are not a mistake and can be used by the district as it sees fit. “So, we have $70,000 more in our undesignated fund balance,” he said.

The superintendent said he took this information to the board of education, which decided to use $25,000 of this money to offset the 1.4% tax levy increase that voters had approved in May. The increase represented $26,532 in additional tax revenue.

“The board felt it wasn’t right to ask for a tax increase when we had the funds here,” Caldwell said.

The remainder of the funds will be set aside “to help offset the local share of future building maintenance capital projects,” he said. “We’re hoping to present a building project to the voters around October of 2020.”

Caldwell noted that some people’s taxes might change as a result of assessment changes, but “we have no control over that.”

Caldwell said that officials at the state level could not explain why the aid had not shown up on earlier reports.

“It may have been aid from 2017-18 that got paid to us late,” he said. “They confirmed that it was ours and we could use it as needed. It was a nice surprise for the district, and we wanted to give it back to the taxpayers. Hopefully, they will be pretty excited about it.”