PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — During a districtwide budget meeting at the high school on May 22, more than 50 area residents approved a $24.7 million School Administrative District 1 budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. The budget, which remains unchanged since initially failing at the polls earlier this month, will once again be presented to district residents for a ballot vote on Tuesday, June 12.
Board members and residents voted unanimously to approve Articles One through 14 of the budget before holding a written ballot vote on Article 15. That article proposed raising and appropriating $2.1 million in additional local funds for any non-state funded debt services, including all instruction, student and staff support, transportation, facilities maintenance and school lunches.
Fifty-eight board and community members voted for the proposed funds while one person voted against it. After Article 15 passed, the board members also unanimously voted to use any additional state education subsidy for any of the above expenses and allocate $305,000 for the school lunch program and appropriate $314,743 for the Adult and Community Education program and raise $95,000 as the local share.
The budget allows for a $403,135 increase from $2.8 million to $3.2 million in spending for the district’s Special Education program.
On May 1, 322 school district residents voted against that same budget, while 246 voted in favor of it. School officials nevertheless decided to present the budget again to voters on June 12 in order to better align with the district’s right-sizing goals and to avoid cutting crucial programs. The right-sizing proposal involves closing at least one or two MSAD 1 schools and renovating existing schools for additional classrooms and administrative offices to account for increasing operational and maintenance costs and for declining student enrollment.
As he stated during a May 10 public forum, SAD 1 Assistant Superintendent of Business Clint Deschene emphasized that the projected increase in school-related property taxes does not include any potential changes in County and municipal taxes.
The proposed 2018-2019 budget represents an increase in the local share of school-related costs of about 2.9 percent for Presque Isle, 7.8 percent for Mapleton, 4.5 percent for Castle Hill and Chapman and 6.5 percent for Westfield. A full explanation of SAD 1’s impact on local property taxes can be found at https://sad1.org/budget-info/.
“We came up with what we believe is a simple explanation to a complex question,” Deschene said during Tuesday night’s meeting.
“The numbers you see only take into account school-related property taxes. We cannot say how your municipal or County taxes will or won’t change for the next fiscal year.”
Residents of the SAD 1 member towns now go to the polls in their respective communities on Tuesday, June 12, for the budget validation referendum vote.
