POLAND — The Regional School Unit 16 board voted Monday night not to change the date of the school budget referendum back to June from its current April date.
The motion to change the date failed to pass, with 459 votes against changing the date and 452 votes in favor.
The vote in RSU 16, which includes Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland, is a weighted vote, based on a formula involving each town’s student population and property valuation.
Although each town seats five directors to the RSU 16 board of directors, each Poland vote counts as 94 votes, each Mechanic Falls vote as 57 votes and each Minot vote as 50 votes.
At its meeting in October, the RSU 16 board changed the referendum date to April 11 in an effort to fill new positions earlier, instead of waiting until the June vote to know what the budget will support.
On Monday night, after narrowly rejecting a return to the June date, the board voted unanimously to hand the budget timeline question back to the Personnel and Finance Committee to come up with another date.
Matt Garside, the town manager in Poland, and Vic Hodgkins, the town manager in Mechanic Falls, attended the meeting and spoke in favor of holding the school budget referendum in June, to coincide with the municipal budget referendums both towns hold at that time.
Minot holds an in-person town meeting in March.
Garside told directors adding an extra voting day creates administrative and financial burdens to the towns, and that the many tasks involved in holding a town vote are the same whether it is for a presidential election or an RSU 16 referendum.
Hodgkins agreed, saying the extra election is a burden on poll workers and taxpayers, who must pay for the extra election and come out to the polls twice instead of once.
He added that April is a busy time already for the town clerk because the municipal budget is being calculated, tax payments are coming in and the town report is being produced.
As for the RSU’s argument that an April vote gives more time for recruiting teachers and other staff, Hodgkins said the district could still recruit new teachers by advertising for anticipated openings. He added that a school vote “in March, April will have a negative impact to your towns’ time, money and, most importantly, people.”
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