AUBURN — Faced with especially tough budgets for the city and the schools, it’s time for elected officials to decide if they can commit to serious cuts, according to Mayor Jonathan LaBonte.
For the city, that could mean forgoing road maintenance and pothole repairs on Auburn’s streets for another year, LaBonte told a joint meeting of the City Council and the School Committee.
For the schools, it could mean closing schools.
“If we are going to choose to underinvest in our infrastructure year after year and let it continue to deteriorate, each elected body needs cast that vote,” LaBonte said. “Each board member knows they are making a decision each year to let our schools deteriorate. If it’s roads, each councilor should have to vote and know they are voting to let our roads fall apart.”
School Committee Chair Tom Kendall took LaBonte’s suggestion a few steps further — he floated the idea of closing all of the city’s elementary schools and replacing them with a single elementary campus somewhere in the city.
“Look at the operating budgets for five elementary schools,” Kendall said. “If you closed them and had only one facility, you would have substantial operating savings annually. If you add the capital requests for maintenance and annual upkeep, I believe the impact would be enough to build a new Edward Little and a new elementary campus.”
A majority of councilors and committee members said the idea was intriguing enough to merit further investigation. Only one, City Councilor at-large Joshua Shea, disagreed. He compared it to playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
“I think you are all living in a fantasy land,” Shea said. “Nobody that goes to any of those schools is going let that happen at the ballot box. Nobody who goes to another school will let that happen for fear it would happen to their school.”
The topic of Monday night’s workshop was the capital budget and the money city officials need to commit to spending over the next five years to keep up city equipment, roads and buildings.
City Manager Clinton Deschene said capital needs citywide include a new Edward Little High School, repairs to several retaining walls around the city, a new use for Ingersoll Arena, a new ladder truck to the fire department, purchases of street lights and funding a riverfront greenway project in New Auburn.
Building maintenance is equally important, with repairs needed at city fire stations. School Superintendent Katy Grondin said school building maintenance is also underfunded. A 2011 school facilities study said the city needed to spend at least $18 million catch up on deferred maintenance.
LaBonte said councilors and school officials need to pick a side when it comes to settling the budget. They need to find out how much they need to spend to keep up city facilities and then decide if they can commit the money to do it.
Ultimately, it’s a question for Auburn residents, LaBonte said.
“I want to hear people talk about where they want to cut,” LaBonte said. “Do you want to look at new ways to look at capital for 20-year period? Do you want the city manager to look at traffic counts to look at pushing roads back to the Department of Transportation? Do we want to have the Superintendent and the City Manager talk about back-office operation savings?”
School Committee member Tracey Levesque said she favored lowering taxes — even if it meant closing schools.
“I think we need to figure out why people are putting their houses on the market or thinking about putting their houses on the market or are fed up with Auburn in general,” Levesque said. “We need to talk to those people. They are well off, they are a higher tax bracket, and they are ready to move, not based on the school system, but on the city.”
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