CARIBOU, Maine — With only about 30 voters in attendance for the RSU 39 budget meeting on May 28, the small group gave a preliminary nod to the $18,404,350 figure attached to the RSU 39’s 2014-15 fiscal year budget.
Residents of Caribou, Limestone and Stockholm will have the final say over that number on Tuesday, June 10 when they take to the polls to cast their votes.
The suggested budget, that was approved during the district-wide meeting last Wednesday, reflects an overall $313,921 reduction from last year’s budget of $18,718,271.
In 2013, the city of Caribou was taxed $3,425,477 for the RSU and in 2014, the city will be taxed $3,495,075. Superintendent of RSU 39 Frank McElwain has explained during previous public RSU 39 School Board meetings that the additional $69,598 could be obtained without increasing the mill rate as the city’s valuation has increased. An increased valuation means the same mill rate yields more tax revenue.
The same figures are shown differently in the city of Caribou’s books, however.
In 2013, the city appropriated $3,336,541 for the RSU, and in 2014, the city will appropriate $3,460,276 — those numbers show an increase of $123,735.
As explained on Tuesday by both Assistant City Manager Tony Mazzucco and McElwain, the discrepancy in the number is a result of the school and the city being on different budget cycles.
As McElwain explained, the RSU 39 budget year runs from July 1 to June 30. The city of Caribou has a budget that starts on January 1 and continues until December 31. Mazzucco confirmed that when Caribou allocates taxes for their 2014 budget, they’re actually paying for half of the 2013 budget and half of the 2014 budget.
During the meeting on May 28, McElwain explained to those in attendance how the overall RSU budget is down nearly $314,000 even with the inclusion of a $280,000 roof replacement for the Caribou Regional Technology Center.
“The reason for the dramatic decrease starts with the loss of revenue,” he explained.
Because of declining enrollments, the RSU’s state aid was reduced by $3,709. Tuition revenues also are estimated to be reduced by over $100,000, as McElwain described. On the expense side, the budget faced increases in health insurance to the tune of 9.5 percent and new cost of retirement added to the local budgets of 2.75 percent.
“The board’s goal in developing this budget was to ask the local taxpayer for the same mill rate effort that has been provided in the past, so that resulted in balancing the budget primarily through reducing expenses,” McElwain said. “The board has supported many hard decisions in reducing expenses in order to meet that goal, reductions that included 10 full-time staff, two part-time and six stipend positions. In addition to those cuts, nearly all staff have felt the impact and are receiving either no increase or a small percentage; others reduced hours, and many reduced contribution to their health insurance.
“The one piece of good news to the budget on the revenue side,” he added, “is we recently assumed our own in-house Medicaid reimbursement services, and we anticipate an additional $50,000 as a result.”