PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Voters in Presque Isle, Mapleton, Chapman, Castle Hill and Westfield approved SAD 1’s budget for 2014-15 last Tuesday by a substantial margin.
The district’s overall budget is $24,008,863, which includes $238,721 for adult education.
In total, 1,050 people voted on the budget. Of that, 652 (62 percent) voted “yes,” while 398 (38 percent) voted “no.”
In Presque Isle, the budget was approved 438-294. In Mapleton, the budget was adopted 137-54, Castle Hill barely passed the budget 19-18, Chapman approved the budget 32-10 and Westfield narrowly OK’d the budget 26-22.
“That’s a fairly substantial validation, so we’re pleased with the voter support in very tough economic times,” said Superintendent Gehrig Johnson.
While the overall budget is up by 3.4 percent, total local taxes will decrease by $94,762.
“For the first time in five years, there’s an increase in state aid of $218,756. For the last several years we’ve seen large decreases in state aid which has complicated our budget situation immensely,” Johnson said. “The reason for that increase is that the 2013 state property valuation in our five communities is down 2.25 percent, and we’ve seen an increase in enrollment of nine students. Those two factors — combined — caused our increase in state aid.
“The two big increases in our budget are due to a large increase of 9.5 percent in medical insurance premiums driving up employee benefit costs by $491,715, as well as teacher retirement costs of $221,733 which local school units were forced to bear beginning last year,” he said. “We’re also dealing with a number of what we call ‘unfunded mandates’ from the state … things like the design of new diploma standards, design and implementation of the new teacher-principal evaluation system, the Common Core standards implementation, and development of the Next Generation science standards.”
In light of a slightly improved overall financial situation and a small increase in enrollment, Johnson said the district was able to maintain professional staff at nearly the same level as 2013-14 with a net reduction of two teaching positions through attrition.
