BANGOR, Maine — Early indications are that turnout will be low in the annual vote on the Bangor School Department budget set for Tuesday.
City Clerk Lisa Goodwin said this week the city has issued just 149 absentee ballots for the vote, including those sent automatically to military personnel serving overseas.
As of Friday, she said, just 93 of those had been returned, compared with 592 absentee votes in the 2014 election and 285 in 2011, the last time the school department budget was the only item on the election.
“You can kind of gauge an election by how many absentees are issued, and this was pretty low,” Goodwin said.
In 2014, the budget vote was held in conjunction with state primary elections, swelling voter turnout to 13 percent of registered voters, some 2,881 votes.
Similarly, in 2013, a referendum on replacing the roof of the Bangor Public Library and whether to continue requiring the school budget be approved by voters helped push voter turnout to 9.7 percent, or 2,204 votes.
But in 2011, with only the school budget on the ballot, voter turnout was just 2.38 percent with only 524 votes cast. In each year, the budget passed by a wide margin regardless of turnout.
This year, voters will consider a $43.89 million budget for the school department, which is a total spending increase of $739,785, or 1.71 percent, over the previous year. That’s a local increase of 1.13 percent, which is equal to an extra 8 cents on the property tax rate.
However, according to Superintendent Betsy Webb, the property tax increase is subject to change. That’s because the school budget is based on the governor’s proposed budget for fiscal 2016-17, which begins July 1.
The Legislature and governor have yet to approve a final budget, but the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs has approved additional state funding for public schools. If that money makes it into the final budget, the local tax increase in Bangor will most likely fall to zero, Webb said.
Both the Bangor School Committee and the City Council voted last month to use any additional state education dollars to reduce the local tax impact, needing $274,972 to zero out the proposed 8-cent increase.
Anything over that would go into a capital reserve fund for minor improvements, facility upgrades, emergency repairs or to reduce future mill rate increases that may result from declining revenues, according to the resolution.
According to Webb, over the past six budgets, state aid for Bangor’s school department has fallen 7.1 percent and total spending has increased 3.8 percent for an average annual increase of 0.6 percent.
She said the school system’s per-pupil cost comes in at about $1,000 less than the state average, and Bangor’s per-pupil spending is less than about 70 percent of the school systems in Maine.
Meanwhile, Bangor’s student-achievement scores rank in the top 10 for all school systems statewide, she said.
Additionally, over the past six years, the school system’s graduation rate has climbed from 71 to 87 percent, and its dropout rate has fallen from 6.7 to 2.4 percent. Total enrollment is about 3,800 for the school system.
In all, 64 percent of the proposed budget would go for instruction of varying types with 2.47 percent for system administration and 5.49 percent for individual school administration.
A total of 80 percent of the budget is for personnel expenses, which Webb said is the benchmark for schools “because the single biggest factor in improving student achievement is the quality of the teacher.”
This year’s budget proposal has incited an unusual war of political signs, beginning May 7 with the placement of a giant papier-mache pig urging residents to vote against the budget.
Bangor resident Paul Trommer, who was involved in the pig project, said last month that he is “just one of many folks who are concerned about the failure of fiscal responsibility by the school department,” which he described as “oozing waste.”
Critics have criticized the school system’s administration costs and the portion spent on personnel.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Cross Insurance Center on Main Street.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.