The budget vote and school board elections this last Tuesday show that local issues and concerns trumped any national or statewide anti-incumbency feeling.

In Ulster County, all but two school districts passed their budgets. In Orange County all but one passed theirs.

In the three districts that this newspaper covers, only a single newcomer broke through to win a seat on a school board. Incumbency rules, at least for now, but then there were few challengers out there.

At Rondout Valley, where a strong anti-tax movement has existed for years, a 2.81 percent increase in the Tax Levy was enough to bring defeat to the budget as more than 1500 determined "No" voters came to the polls.

In Ellenville, the established order prevailed easily over a maverick challenge and the budget passed with scarcely a blink. But again, in Ellenville, the tax levy increase was pegged back to 1.74 percent, which was not enough to arouse anti-tax fury.

In the Pine Bush School District, a 3.99 percent increase in the tax levy, despite an overall decrease in the budget because of savage cuts imposed by Albany, brought the anti-budget vote up by about 500 votes over last year, but was not sufficient to vote it down.

Considering what every school district in New York is looking at next year — when the Federal Stimulus will be gone, and who knows what sort of State budget the next Governor will try to bring in, we may look back on this election cycle as the calm before the storm.

Another thing that aided incumbents was the scarcity of credible challengers. In Rondout Valley there was one, in Ellenville two, and in Pine Bush one, Lloyd Greer, a well known local figure from Walker Valley, who was the only challenger to win. Ten Seats, four challengers, and only a single upset.

What this tells us is that serving on a school board, an unpaid position with a lot of work attached, is not something that many people are keen to do.

But it also says that there needs to be a concerted effort to recruit candidates to run for these seats. Whether a particular school district decides to do more, or an outside civic group fields its own slate of candidates to run for these seats, something has to happen to give voters a reason to get out and vote.

In the case of Ellenville, voters apparently felt that the challengers were not the right persons for the job and they turned out in droves to support the status quo. Rondout, on the other hand, had to deal with an anti-tax campaign that saw "Vote NO on the Budget" signs pop up all over the place. There, in seeing its preferred budget rejected, the district must now accept a contingency budget that will force it to cut costs even further.

There can be no doubt that more can be done to inform the citizenry about how a person goes about running for the school board. Districts also need to do more to inform residents about the budget process, primarily to ensure that people know what they're voting for.

Having viable challengers each year means that incumbents will be held accountable, and will have to answer to the electorate in a referendum on their performance. A lack of challengers means that poorly-run school districts can govern with impunity. And a poorly-informed electorate doesn't necessarily make the wisest decisions. Having essentially no real choice in a school board election isn't really the best way to inspire voters to become involved in a process that seems to mean little in the greater scheme of things.