PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — MSAD 1’s preliminary budget has made it to the next step in this season’s budget process and voters will have the final say on Tuesday, May 2.
Residents from the five communities MSAD 1 serves — Chapman, Castle Hill, Mapleton, Westfield and Presque Isle — attended a budget meeting at PIHS last Wednesday evening.
Close to 70 voters helped pass all articles in the coming fiscal year’s preliminary budget.
The meeting lasted approximately half an hour, according to Superintendent Brian Carpenter.
“Taxes are down 1.5 percent, expenditures are down 1.46 percent. We’ve done due diligence,” Carpenter said. “People wanted to see a reduction and we’ve done it over the last year and we’ve done it with less subsidy from the state, but we can only cut for so long.”
The preliminary budget total comes to $24,231,010 for fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017 and ending June 30, 2018.
The school district’s proposed budget is down $350,808.75 in expenses, which is a -1.44 percent decrease, according to SAD1.org.
MSAD 1 lost $222,313 in state subsidy, however administrators say if the state hadn’t reduced subsidy below last year’s allocation, the five-community district would have been down -4.08 percent overall in property taxes.
Maneuvering around the loss in state subsidy and still managing a reduction in the draft budget meant the MSAD 1 salaried employees took the brunt of the decrease, Carpenter said.
“Administrators took the hit for right now anyway for the reductions. Their contracts are annual so we negotiate a contract with them and their raises weren’t as great as they have been in the past,” he said.
Along with raises remaining low for administrators, the district searched for lower rate insurance for the system, “instead of a standard plan they’ve gone to a Choice Plus plan,” he said.
On the up side, no positions were cut thanks to internal adjustments, although Carpenter said he is still looking for attrition through retirement.
And rather than cut student programs the district has added programs at PIHS such as forensics, computer science, mental health, games in education and cosmetology into the Presque Isle Regional Career and Technical Center.
“This is a good budget, it’s good for what we want to do this year,” he said.
