MILLINOCKET, Maine — Residents approved the school system’s $6.18 million budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year by a single vote — 168-167 — in a validation election held Tuesday.
The one-vote margin even surprised Town Clerk Roxanne Johnson, who described the daylong voting as too close to call. The 335 voters came from the town’s 3,142 registered voters, or about 10.6 percent of the electorate.
“They kept their opinions to themselves,” Johnson said about the voters. “I thought [voter turnout] was higher than I expected.”
The school budget is retroactively in effect to July 1, the start of the fiscal year. It represents an increase of $54,473 over last year’s budget, school Superintendent Frank Boynton has said.
The Town Council approved the school budget and a $4.69 million municipal government budget with a series of mostly unanimous votes cast at a special town meeting on July 16. The validation vote makes the school budget official.
Under Millinocket’s town government system, the school budget is part of the overall town budget. The Millinocket School Committee recommends a budget to the Town Council, which approves the amount of money spent.
The two budgets will produce a tax rate of $29.63 per $100,000 of assessed value, slightly higher than the previous rate of $29.60, officials have said. The town cut more than $800,000 from its budget over the last three months to offset losses in state aid, declining tax revenues and money once generated by equipment at the former Katahdin Avenue paper mill.
School officials have cut their budgets from $8 million to $6.3 million to the present level over the last four years. Declines in state aid and school population have been among the factors forcing the cuts. Millinocket’s school population has declined to 502 students as of June, down from 655 in the 2006-07 school year, according to the Maine Department of Education.
The school and town budgets are sustainable, but “we are going to need a little luck,” Town Manager John Davis said Thursday.
Council plans to attempt to improve the town’s economy will likely be helpful, said Davis.
“I think there are a couple of committees trying to form right now, so the council will be involved,” he said. “That can only be good. We haven’t got started yet, but I have heard some pretty good ideas thrown around out there.”