Residents give initial nod to SAD 1 budget
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — At last Wednesday night’s district-wide budget meeting, residents gave their initial approval of SAD 1’s $24,138,091 budget for 2015-16. Step two of the budget process is a budget validation referendum that will be held June 9 in Presque Isle, Mapleton, Chapman, Castle Hill and Westfield.
“With this year’s budget, the state did us a favor by coming in basically with flat funding; there were no major decreases with state education, so that allowed us to come forth with a district budget that has an expense increase of only $120,735, or .5 percent,” explained Clint Deschene, assistant superintendent for business. “That’s one of the lowest we’ve seen in recent years.
“The things that brought us to those numbers was the state education funding decreased by $74,000, so we did have a little bit to make up,” he said. “The other thing that changed is they did increase the local required mill rate. So we were required to raise an additional $260,743 locally. That was a mandated increase, but with efficiencies in the budget, we were able to reduce that to $163,320, so we made reductions in debt service and increased our local additional contributions by $97,000 which allowed us to reduce the forced increase from the state.”
Deschene said the district also made some minor changes with miscellaneous revenues.
“We’re increasing our cash balance by $46,000 for a total of $3,620,985 to lessen the impact on taxes,” he said. “Other things that are impacting this budget are energy savings that we’ve seen from switching from oil to propane in all our buildings; we’ve seen some reductions due to retirements and staffing costs; and we’ve also seen one of the lowest increases in health insurance so there was actually an opportunity to see savings in the overall benefit costs to the district.”
Also, the state’s shift of Maine State Retirement costs to the local budget increased expenses by $69,818.
“There’s another major change that we’ve been discussing — one-to-one computing at the high school is included in this year’s budget, which would mean laptops or iPads for every student in our high school which is a major step in the right direction for our educational system,” said Deschene.
In addressing property taxes, Deschene said the district is asking municipalities for an additional $163,320.
“For their budget year that they’re in right now (Jan. 1-Dec. 31), the actual total increase is only $34,278, or .41 percent, so it’s a very minimal adjustment,” he said.
Castle Hill will see a 1.53 percent increase, Chapman (1.39 percent), Mapleton (1.51 percent), Westfield (1.24 percent) and Presque Isle (0.04 percent).
“When you look across the state and some school districts doing 3 percent-7 percent increases and we’re putting forth half a percent increases,” said Deschene, “I consider this a very good year. We’re very financially stable, and we should be able to sustain this without any major changes happening in Augusta for the next few years.”
After electing Michael MacPherson as moderator to preside over the district budget meeting (Article 1), residents approved the following items:
• (Article 2) $8,393,731 for Regular Instruction.
• (Article 3) $2,736,408 for Special Education.
• (Article 4) $1,631,227 for Career & Technical Education.
• (Article 5) $951,952 for Other Instruction.
• (Article 6) $2,099,556 for Student & Staff Support.
• (Article 7) $718,209 for System Administration.
• (Article 8) $1,176,237 for School Administration.
• (Article 9) $2,032,456 for Transportation and Buses.
• (Article 10) $2,989,134 for Facilities Maintenance.
• (Article 11) $881,967 for Debt Service and Other Commitments.
• (Article 12) $280,000 for All Other Expenditures including School Lunch.
• (Article 13) $6,654,680 in local tax dollars to receive all of the available state support for education.
• (Article 14) $881,967 for the annual payments on debt service previously approved by the legislative body for non-state funded school construction projects, non-state-funded portions of school construction projects and minor capital projects, in addition to the funds appropriated as the local share of the school administrative unit’s contribution to the total cost of funding public education from pre-kindergarten to grade 12.
• (Article 15) $820,120.50 in additional local funds, which exceeds the state’s Essential Programs and Services allocation model by $423,867.83. A written ballot was required for this article. It was approved 91-2.
• (Article 16) To see if the Regional School Unit will increase the amount of the total school budget and the amounts the school board is authorized to expend under the previous articles, to the extent of any unanticipated increase in the adjusted state contribution under the Essential Programs and Services funding model.
• (Article 17) $23,890,877 for the board of school directors to expend for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2015 and ending June 30, 2016 from the school administrative unit’s contribution to the total cost of funding public education from pre-kindergarten to grade 12 as described in the Essential Programs and Services Funding Act, unexpended balances, tuition receipts, state subsidy, and other receipts for the support of schools.
• (Article 18) Appropriate $247,214 for Adult Education and raise $94,990 as the local share, with authorization to expend any additional, incidental, or miscellaneous receipts in and for the well being of the adult education program.
The budget validation referendum will be held Tuesday, June 9. Voters should contact their municipal offices for exact polling times and locations.
