PARIS — Board of Selectmen Chairman Sam Elliot refused to let the chairman of the Oxford Hills School Board speak at a round-table discussion on rising school costs Thursday night, prompting Ron Kugell to walk out with four other directors.
“We’d like to help,” school board Chairman Kugell of Oxford said when he asked to be recognized.
Elliot refused his request.
Joining Kugell and directors Barry Patrie of Waterford, Curtis Cole of Paris, Donald Gouin of Norway and Michael Dignan of Paris in the walkout was Otisfield Selectman Rick Micklon.
Officials from five of the eight district towns met for three hours at the Paris Fire Station to discuss the impact of the preliminary 2013-14 school budget, which may require an overall 11 percent increase in property assessments next year.
The workshop was arranged by Elliot, who asked selectmen and budget committee chairmen to attend to discuss what impact the proposed assessment would have on individual towns and how best to address it as a group.
Several of the school board members are also Budget Committee members in their towns, but were not seated at the table.
“We wanted to hear their concerns and how we could help each other,” Kugell said in a phone interview after the meeting. “It’s too bad. They could have helped. Sam (Elliot) wasn’t interested in that.”
Earlier this month, SAD 17 Superintendent Rick Colpitts presented a preliminary budget that could impact the total assessment for all eight district towns with an average 10.99 percent increase, or $1,864,089 more than this fiscal year.
Last year, voters approved a $35.1 million budget with an overall 6.03 percent increase in local assessments.
Kugell said unless legislators agree to waive the state’s minimum local required share for education spending, taxpayers in the Oxford Hills School District may have to raise an additional $1.8 million for the 2013-14 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2013.
“We’re hoping to extend the waiver,” Kugell said. “If Sam had been receptive to listening to us there are things those people could have done to help us. But then if the problem was solved, Sam wouldn’t have a cause.”
“If he thinks the way he treated us will help, he better have a reality check,” Kugell said.
Selectmen from Waterford, Otisfield, Paris, Hebron and Harrison, plus Harrison Town Manager George “Bud” Finch, Paris Budget Committee Chairman Vic Hodgkins and state Rep. Lisa Villa of Harrison volleyed a series of suggestions in the initial discussion.
Many of them said they had kept their town budgets flat or as near flat as they could for the past few years as they attempted to deal with rising assessments from not only the school district but the county and other costs.
“It’s becoming a catastrophe for any town to absorb,” Otisfield Selectman Chairman Hal Ferguson said of the rising school assessment. He said it had to be paid for partly by dipping into the surplus fund this past year.
“We can’t keep doing this. There needs to be a different way,” Hodgkins said.
Finch said school officials have to be part of the solution, but the problem goes well beyond the school budget.
“It’s a total picture problem,” he said. “I think we’re in a crisis situation.”
The group decided they should continue to meet and make it a goal to speak to the superintendent, involve legislators and better understand the school budgeting process.
Finch said the group must involve everyone.
“One size doesn’t fit all,” he said. “It can’t be us against the school board. It has to be ‘we have a real serious problem here folks.’”
Losing local control was a mistake.
A petition and the right results of it would bring local control back.
Unfortunately I don’t live in a decimated small town in Maine or I’d be there in the front row at EVERY meeting, taking notes and names. I am “blessed” to be in the district that has Superintendent of the Year Betsy Webb. We don’t get to say squat here. It’s done if she says it’s done and not until.
Ya when push come to shove Webb wins. Not to mention the the fact that she ether denies or ignores any serious problems. Just how much are we paying Bob Lucy? Any school board member that tries to bring up an issue is railroaded . Let not forget Kate Dickerson . She tried to advocate for the at risk kids. Webb dose a lot of good things but it mist be noted that Bangor still has issues.
Why, do I detect a note of sarcasm in your post?
No it wasn’t. Out of control spending on educational “nice to have” add on extras rather than “have to have” core educational programs are the problem along with a protracted fight to minimize any benefit regional control might have given us. Local egos and bad priorities are behind budgetary problems in our education system.
I do not agree. I believe egos were magnified and fiefdoms strengthened by school consolidation. Loss of town identities as well as big boys sitting on the little ones and bossing them around was also the plan to ruin public education and drive people from rural to urban thought processes.
Sorry we couldn’t do more before it happened, but the messengers were shot by well-meaning dupes.
What are these so called “nice to have” add-ons watchdog?
This is a set up question. Your intent is to use my answer to try and discredit my original point here. Please reference above for my original point.
…or you could just answer my question. Unless your answer is as weak as your previous two points above. And you can unlike my posts all you want watchdog.
OK, I’ll bite! $60,000,000 schools are not a necessity. In fact 4 schools in the Bangor region alone have cost taxpayers in excess of $170,000,000! Anything more than a casual athletic program is not a necessity (please reference recent BDN article about busing kids from the Bangor area to Aroostook for a game). After school programs meant to baby sit kids are not necessary. Holding evening events unrelated to the education of children are not necessary. In aggregate, omitting these few items alone would put the educational system back in the green and do so without raising taxes or firing teachers.
What a great gift it would be to all of us, if we realized how dysfunctional and wrong our long war in Afganistan has been (as well as the ten year war in Iraq), and stopped spending so much on brutal and wanton killing–and suddenly, miraculously, put money into spreading wisdom, and healing the psychological disease that owns our society.
The School Board proposes; the Town Council disposes….worked well for over one hundred years until the Baldacci/Gendron ‘consolidation’ took away local control.
My thoughts exactly.. I went to some of them meetings, they made us write our questions on paper, then screened which ones John would answer.. OH all the beautiful people who actually thought that their property taxes would go down, LOL!!! My God they are misled easily… Consolidation of power rather than schools is how it should have been worded… hahaha, it is funny when you think about it, they followed suit when John Baldacci said he would take care of them almost to the point of tucking them in at night, and they believed. Praise the John!!!
All jobs that are paid for by public money need to be cut and salaries and benifits need to be cut.
Anarchy has been tried, and it doesn’t work.
Im surprised they did not stick their fingers in their ears and say I can not hear you
It’s really pretty simple, all gov levels of budget are overblown: Here is how they work: For the 1st qtr I received 25k dollars, only spent 15, the management went nuts, and spent the rest of the 10k on useless unneeded stuff, and requested 30k in the next budget meeting, and that is how all levels of a govt budget works, it is a “Use it or loose it” attitude.
One way or the other, change is coming.
These people are just now coming to the conclusion that they need to learn how the school funding formula works? They should have been on board since day one. Consolidation or whatever it is called today is not working because the people are not involved. They need to get out of the house and participate in the process if they want better spending.