AUBURN — The School Committee agreed Wednesday night to present the City Council with a budget with a 1.3% local increase.
The original increase of 1.5% was based on a 10% increase in health insurance costs, but Superintendent Connie Brown said she learned this week that the increase would be no higher than 4.5%. That reduced the proposed budget by $324,704, she said.
She said the $49 million budget — before the reduction in health insurance costs — would add an estimated $43 tax on a property valued at $150,000.
Committee members said they were happy with the superintendent’s draft plan.
“Considering 85% of this budget is salaries and benefits, I think you’ve done a phenomenal job,” member Brian Belknap said. “This budget is fair and equitable. I commend you.”
Others agreed, but Brian Carrier, the mayor’s representative to the School Committee, said he was uncomfortable with any tax increase.
“My job is to rain on your parade, to try to keep the budget as close as we can (to the current year’s),” Carrier said.
Much of the increase in the 2021-22 spending plan is the first local payment on the new Edward Little High School. That payment is $294,000.
Business Manager Adam Hanson noted that the proposed increase of $237,000 is now lower than that payment.
The draft plan also includes a reduction of $1.2 million in salaries.
Brown recommended reinstating 12 of those positions with American Rescue Plan Act funds, the third COVID-19 relief package.
Those positions are an alternative education teacher, a special education teacher at Edward Little High School and 10 educational technicians.
The district is likely to receive relief money, but the amount and the criteria for how it must be used was unknown as of Wednesday, Brown said.
“The limited early information indicates that the funds must be used to restore learning loss,” she wrote in a memo to the School Committee.
The budget will be presented at a public hearing April 7. Once the School Committee adopts a plan, it must be approved by the City Council. The final draft will go to city voters at a referendum in June.
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