MILLINOCKET, Maine — The numbers are far from final, but Superintendent of Schools Frank Boynton says that the school system is looking at a $400,000 shortfall in next year’s budget.
Boynton warned the Town Council during its meeting on Thursday that as the state’s budget projections stand now, he expects that the School Department will get $314,000 less in education funding next year than it received in this fiscal year, which ends June 30. Another $71,000 in tuition will be lost because seven of nine students from unorganized territories have moved into town, he said.
“It’s pretty bad news,” Boynton said.
“We are trimming our budget as much as possible but you need to know what we are looking at,” Boynton added. “I want to give you that as a preliminary, to start with.”
Councilors appreciated the warning. They said they expect to see shortfalls in town government revenue from the state and hoped that they and the school board could fashion budgets that keep the town’s property tax rate under $30 per $1,000 of valuation next year.
“Knowing what we have to deal with, I don’t see how we can deal with a school budget that comes in higher this year,” Councilor Jimmy Busque said.
“It has got to be solved somehow,” Councilor Anita Mueller said.
“This is depressing as hell,” Councilor Michael Madore said.
Under the town’s present $29.60 mill rate, the tax on a $50,000 property is $1,480. At $27, the tax on the same property would be $1,350. Millinocket had a $29.96 mill rate in the 2013-14 fiscal year and a $26.40 rate the year before that.
Councilors are concerned that the high tax rate leaves Millinocket unable to draw the residents and businesses it needs to avert crisis. Former Town Manager Peggy Daigle estimated in January that the council would have to cut $1.5 million to $2 million in the town budget to maintain the $29.60 mill rate. The school system would have to make about the same in cuts, Daigle said, after having cut almost $550,000 to get its budget to about $5.6 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year.
Councilors have already cut the municipal budget from $6.72 million in the 2012-13 fiscal year to $5.80 million in this fiscal year, she said, in order to cope with declining revenues.
Boynton cautioned that the state funding situation could improve. He discussed several scenarios that illustrated how dramatically changes in the state funding and local budgeting processes could improve or worsen the School Department’s financial situation by June 30.
His overall goal, he said, was to be very cautious in projecting revenues and forthright in projecting expenses so as not to mislead the council and new Town Manager John Davis. In Millinocket, the school budget is part of the overall town budget. The council sets an overall budget and the school board directs how money is spent, and revenues produced, within the school system.