FARMINGTON – Regional School Unit 9 directors will meet Tuesday, June 23, to develop a second budget for 2015-16 that supports children’s educational needs and takes into consideration the effect on taxpayers’ pockets.
Voters rejected a proposed $32.25 million budget by a 741 to 1,045 vote on June 9. It was a 3.9 percent increase, or $1.2 million from the current budget.
Only three of the 10 district towns supported the budget.
“We are making a good effort on our part to make legitimate reductions. We have heard the people,” Superintendent Tom Ward said.
One benefit to the 10 towns could be a proposed state budget that would add $25 million to the coming year and the year after to General Purpose Aid to Education for the entire state, Ward said. That still has to be passed by the Legislature and the governor, he said.
The funding would go through the state’s formula to determine what each school system would receive. It would reduce the education part of the tax rate from $8.47 per $1,000 of property value to $8.23 per $1,000 for the next two years, Ward said.
He has pushed out the vote on the budget as far as he could under law so that the district would have accurate numbers of what the district would receive in state funding and the affects on the towns.
Once a budget fails, the district has 45 days to vote on another proposal, he said.
As it stands, the meeting on June 23 will start at 6:30 p.m. with an executive session, and a budget discussion scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Forum at Mt. Blue Campus on Seamon Road in Farmington.
Residents will be allowed to speak during the meeting as long as it pertains to what is being discussed by the board. All the meetings are open to the public, board members stressed.
The tentative date to set the budget is July 7, with a districtwide budget meeting and vote on July 21, followed by a yes or no validation referendum on July 28 in each of the towns.
Ward told the board that the district’s carryover is dangerously low at $250,000 and that is not the way to run a $30 million budget.
The board also has to be careful to have enough contingency to protect the district if students with special needs move to the district, he said. It can cost between $50,000 to $100,000 to provide services for the students. About 64 percent of special education costs could be reimbursed in two years.
On July 1, the board will be in the second year of a three-year plan to get the district back on track after years of cuts, Ward said.
Now they are looking at delaying some of the positions that were put in the original budget to support special education and to keep class sizes down. More than $600,000 in the rejected budget was to support special education and bring the district into compliance, Ward said previously.
It is recommended that at least $155,000 be put into contingency and it could be used toward carryover the following year if not spent.
The administrative team has come up with a possible $230,000 in cuts, he said.
“We think that is way too much,” he said.
They went through every line in a painstaking process trying to find places that they could possibly make recommendations to cut, he said. With those possible cuts it could bring the budget down to a little over a 3 percent increase, Ward said.
He said he is hoping between a lower budget, the reductions to towns assessments and a decrease in the educational tax rate it would bring the proposal down to something voters can support, he said.
The board discussed the pros and cons of setting an arbitrary percentage of an increase to shoot for, which was supported by at least one member and disliked by several others.
dperry@sunmediagroup.net
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