BANGOR, Maine — Without dissent, the City Council accepted on Monday the first reading of a $43.97 million budget recommendation for local schools.
The spending recommendation from the Bangor School Committee is unchanged from the committee’s April 8 vote, though the city’s revenue estimates have changed.
Superintendent Betsy Webb said the school budget would result in an 11 cent increase in the local property tax millage rate. That’s down from the initial 15 cent projection. Webb said the city’s property tax valuation came in higher than initially projected, reducing the projected impact to the millage rate.
If approved by the council during its May 27 meeting, the budget proposal will move to voters for a public referendum June 9.
The budget calls for a 1.91 percent increase in spending over the current fiscal year.
Webb noted the school system’s budget has increased annually by an average of just 0.6 percent over the past six years, despite an approximate $850,000 shift of teacher retirement costs from the state to the local level since 2014.
The current budget is based only on the governor’s budget proposal, but more state revenues are possible.
Webb said the Maine School Management Association has said the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee could make a budget recommendation as early as Saturday that would include extra funding for General Purpose Aid for schools.
If that happens, Webb said she was not sure how the extra money would be used. It could go toward reducing the local tax impact, provide more programs in the existing budget or go to reserve for use in future years.
“Those are things that we would need to talk about and obviously the school committee would have to decide and then they would make that recommendation to the City Council,” Webb said.
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