MILLINOCKET, Maine — It’s been rejected before, but the Millinocket school board has again offered to accept students from neighboring towns East Millinocket and Medway, officials said Thursday.
The offer to accept 191 East Millinocket K-12 students for $1,579,000, or $8,267 per student, went to East Millinocket and Medway selectmen and school boards on Oct. 1. Medway’s tuition is not specified in the two-page letter, but it would be comparable with East Millinocket’s, according to Millinocket school board Chairman Michael Jewers.
Jewers said he and new Superintendent Frank Boynton resubmitted the tuition to clarify what was being offered rather than allow speculation to continue.
“There was so much speculation, that we just wanted to go into detail about what that [offer] would cover,” Jewers said Thursday. “I think we are getting a better reception on that offer. I am hoping.
“We have heard nothing negative so far and just that alone is a welcoming sign,” Jewers added. “I don’t want to be the one on a bully pulpit. We just want to let common sense prevail and see where that puts us.”
The offer includes transportation and regular special education services. Millinocket officials also would “entertain an agreement for some or all of the 191 East Millinocket students and additional Medway students,” the letter states, including only high school students, Medway students only, or any other configuration Medway or East Millinocket officials would suggest.
Medway school board Chairman Greg Stanley’s response to a request for comment was to say that his school board would look at the offer “possibly next week.” East Millinocket School Committee Chairman Dan Byron said his board had not yet seen the tuition offer but would discuss it at a meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Schenck High School, during a joint meeting with the Medway and Woodville school boards.
“We will probably determine what our response will be then,” Byron said Thursday.
Byron said Millinocket refloated the offer “probably because we can’t seem to get our budget passed, and they probably felt it was a good time to do it.”
East Millinocket residents have rejected their schools’ proposed $4.01 million budgets for the 2014-15 school year three times in referendums after much smaller groups of townspeople and teachers passed them at town meetings. A fourth referendum is set for Nov. 4, said East Millinocket Interim Administrative Assistant Angela Cote.
Earlier estimates placed the combined town-school budget impact as raising East Millinocket’s mill rate from $21.93 per thousand in property valuation to $27 per thousand, if delinquent taxpayer Great Northern Paper Co. paid its overdue taxes. The rate would increase to $37 per thousand if GNP continues to fail to pay.
A recent $217,000 budget cut by East Millinocket schools, and a $130,000 town government cut, will probably lessen the mill rate increase to $31 or $32 per thousand, Byron said. By comparison, the statewide average adjusted property tax rate was $13.99 in 2012, the most recent year statewide figures were available.
Cote declined to comment on the latest estimates, saying that the mill rate formula is complex and depends on many variables. The town’s assessor, William Van Tuinen — who sets the annual mill rate — did not return messages left on Thursday.
A $27 mill rate would mean owners of $50,000 properties would pay $1,350 in property taxes this year instead of $1,096 under the present rate. A $31 mill rate would leave owners of $50,000 properties paying $1,550; a $32 mill rate, $1,600, or $504 more per year than they paid under the present rate. A $37 mill rate would leave owners of $50,000 homes paying $1,850, or $754 more than they paid in 2013-14.
East Millinocket faces “a high mill rate, there’s no getting around it, but it might only be for the short run” if the town gets some sort of payout from Great Northern, Byron said.
“That’s the real trouble here,” Byron said of the mill’s delinquency in taxes.
Relations between Millinocket’s school board and those of East Millinocket and Medway have remained tense despite occasional attempts to restore amity. Millinocket last offered to accept East Millinocket students for $1.5 million in February 2013, touting the idea as a way for East Millinocket to avoid having to spend several million dollars renovating Schenck High School. East Millinocket eventually rejected the offer.
A meeting in May 2013 in which East Millinocket and Millinocket school boards discussed sharing more academic, arts and sports programs had so much sparring between the boards that a student representative scolded both for their inability to get along.
The school boards of East Millinocket, Medway and Woodville sent a proposal in February 2014 to Millinocket offering to combine the Katahdin region’s two high schools. Under the one-page memo offered by the three Katahdin region towns, students attending Stearns High School in Millinocket would attend Schenck.
According to the plan, Millinocket would have saved $700,000, Clark said. Millinocket would have paid $9,209 in tuition per student sent to Schenck instead of the town’s cost per student of $13,158 at Stearns. Millinocket rejected the offer.