Unlike last year’s tumultuous budget process, voters in Maine School Administrative District 1 communities approved the next school year’s budget on the first pass Tuesday, May 2, and supported continuing the annual school budget referendum.
Based on the tallies from MSAD 1’s five member communities — Castle Hill, Chapman, Mapleton, Presque Isle and Westfield — the $24.23 million budget for the 2017-2018 school year was approved by a majority of voters, said Clinton Deschene, assistant superintendent for business.
A majority of voters also voted yes on a second referendum question, which asked: “Do you wish to continue the referendum process in Maine School Administrative District No. 1 for an additional three years.”
That vote means the referendum process for the school budget will continue. A majority “no” vote would have eliminated the budget referendum, and relied on the in-person district budget meeting where the public is asked to approve warrants for the budget, a step in the process that currently precedes the district-wide referendum.
Financially, this MSAD 1 budget was significantly less controversial than last year, when it took three tries for a budget to be accepted by local voters weary of years of property tax increases in their shared school district and local municipalities.
The 2016-2017 budget started out with what would have been a 9 percent increase in the communities’ annual tax assessment, and ended up with a 1.8 percent increase (or a 0.9 percent increase for the municipal year).
The new budget for the next school year comes with a 1.5 percent reduction in the district’s average local property assessment, and a 1.4 percent reduction in overall spending.
“We’ve done due diligence,” superintendent Brian Carpenter said at the district’s April meeting. “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 budget’s near-flat spending was made possible with savings from across MSAD 1 operations, including repurposing facilities and staff positions and moving to a shared librarian for the middle and high schools.
Carpenter said the budget’s cuts to local tax assessments would have been lower this year — a reduction on the order of 4 percent — were it not for a loss of $222,000 from the state government’s contributions.
