RSU 50 board OKs revised budget

  STACYVILLE, Maine — Residents will have a second crack at passing an RSU 50 school budget after its board approved a $9 million spending plan during a special meeting Aug. 3.
An informational hearing on the budget will be held Wednesday, Aug. 24 at 6 p.m. at Katahdin High School, followed by the district budget meeting at 7 p.m. During the district meeting, residents will be asked to approve various warrant articles, and may also add or subtract dollar amounts from any of the articles.
    A district-wide referendum is slated for Wednesday, Sept. 7 at the various town offices. The district needs to get a budget approved after voters rejected a $9,267,716 fiscal plan at the polls June 30.
As presented Aug. 3, an extra $252,000 has been trimmed from the budget that failed at the polls. The list of reductions featured the elimination of three teaching positions at Southern Aroostook Community School and one at Katahdin Elementary School. All four were elementary positions that are currently vacant in the two schools. Those positions include a kindergarten vacancy, fifth-grade vacancy and sixth-grade vacancy all at SACS and a third-grade vacancy at Katahdin Elementary School. A Gifted and Talented teacher vacancy could also be left unfilled.
The RSU board approved the proposed budget by a weighted vote of 573 for and 186 against. Board members Scot Walker and Kim Lane opposed the budget.
From the very first draft of the budget, the board has cut about $700,000 in spending. Comparing the proposed budget to previous school years has proven difficult since this is the first year of RSU 50, with no prior budgets to compare to.
Interim Superintendent John Doe explained the increased impact on taxes in some communities was due to a number of factors, but primarily it was due to a reduction in the amount of money the state was giving the district. He also said the proposed budget is a decrease in spending over last year, but the reductions were not enough to offset the loss in revenues. Adding the 2010-11 school budgets of SAD 25 and CSD 9 together totals $9,235,646. The proposed 2011-12 budget is $219,930 less than that figure, or a decrease of about 2.4 percent in spending.
As is the case with other school districts in the area, RSU 50 will receive slightly less in terms of state funding, and will have to come up with more local money in order to receive that state funding in its 2011-12 budget. The district will receive $4,744,949 from the state, a decrease of nearly $110,000, and also loses $161,928 in federal stabilization funds and adult education reimbursement, decreasing the total amount of aid by nearly $300,000. Income, in the form or tuition, day programs, interest and sports revenues, is also down $450,000 from a year ago.
The required local share for the district in order to get that full state aid is $2,386,779, an increase of 2.5 percent. However, because the district is spending more than what the state says it should for “Essential Programs and Services,” additional local funds are needed from each of the communities to balance the budget. That additional local figure is $1,746,918 (an increase of nearly $700,000).
To help reduce the tax impact, the district is taking $400,000 from its surplus account, bringing the bottom line local costs to $3,769,767. That figure is an increase of nearly 10.6 percent ($360,693) over a year ago.
The former CSD 9 school district comprises 55.63 percent of the new budget, while the former SAD 25 makes up 43.02 percent. The towns of Hersey and Moro make up the remaining 1.35 percent.
The total local share for all of the member communities is not going up across the board. Some of the communities — Crystal, Dyer Brook, Hersey, Island Falls, Merrill and Moro — will actually see a decrease in their local share of the budget.
Several residents spoke during the special meeting, with all of them urging the board to take a harder look at areas to cut.
“Previously the budget failed in Sherman, as it did in many of the other towns,” said David Robinson of Sherman. “Many of the citizens in Sherman feel that the cost of going to school is too much. I would say the majority of the citizens would prefer to be an SAD at this point.”
Sherman is one of the communities that will be hardest hit if the budget passes, seeing an increase of $61,533 to its local share of the budget. Patten has the largest increase to its local share at $71,902.
Robinson said he felt the residents would not pass a budget that included the position of business manager, a position which he felt “was nice to have,” but may not be “necessary.”
Later in the week, however, Robinson’s take on the budget appeared to have softened in a letter to the editor sent to The Houlton Pioneer Times. (See page Three B). In his letter, Robinson urged voters in RSU 50 to vote in favor of the budget.
“The increase to the homeowners isn’t substantial enough for us to demand the $750,000 in reductions the board would have to find to flatten the budget and have no tax increase,” he wrote.
Terry Hill of Mount Chase said she wished the RSU board had more discussions on areas to reduce the budget during the workshop held July 12.
“The one thing I didn’t see happen was much work in this process, since we defeated the other budget,” she said. “Did that [discussions] happen behind the scenes? We can’t afford an increase. Our businesses are all down.”
Hill added she feared the board was setting itself up for another defeated budget at the polls.
“If you come back with increases like this still, and we don’t pass this budget a second time, you will have to come back to it again,” she said. “You have to move on to hiring a new superintendent and starting negotiations. There are things here you can cut that do not affect our children’s education. I thought there would be more to this process tonight. I am extremely disappointed.”
Hill added she wanted to see the board present a budget that had zero increase in taxes to the communities it served.
Doe explained that in order to reach that goal, the board would need to slash a considerable amount of money from its budget, which he felt would have a serious negative impact on the students’ education.
Board chairman Phil Knowles said the budget represented the board’s best efforts at striking a balance.
“We lost nearly $400,000 in state funds and on top of that the state has asked us to increase our local share to get that money,” Knowles said. “You want a flat budget? This is flat. We are operating a bare-bones budget. In my opinion, we are cutting positions we shouldn’t be cutting as it is.”
“This budget is so tight, it’s positively ridiculous,” added Walker. “I understand people are out of work and towns can’t afford [an increase], but I don’t believe we can afford not to do everything we can do for the kids. This budget is very lean. I hope the townspeople respect that. You have to trust us, we’re doing everything we can, but still provide an education.”