FORT KENT, Maine — District officials are hoping a proposed SAD 27 fiscal year 2015-16 budget can survive a referendum vote later this month after residents approved the $12.1 million budget Wednesday night.
This will be the district’s third attempt at getting a budget past the voters this summer after two budgets survived meeting votes but failed on subsequent referendum votes.
The budget now goes to a districtwide referendum vote on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
Several attempts to reduce the proposed budget by $128,000 failed in a round of secret ballots.
“The time to start cutting the budget was five years ago,” said resident Robert Michaud, who proposed the amendments. “The time to start is now [because] taxes are going up and it will affect all of you.”
James Charette, interim co-superintendent, said the proposed budget represented a zero percent increase to the local tax commitment.
Voters rejected a proposed $12.8 million budget in June, which would have translated into a property tax increase of nearly 20 percent districtwide. Charette said administrators and the school board got the message and came back with a proposal that included more than $700,000 in cuts and the zero percent local increase.
“It’s obvious education costs money, but if you want quality education you have to pay for it,” Paul Ouellette of Fort Kent said. “We have to look for the betterment of the kids in school today, and if you cut the budget, we cut quality education, and we are all going to pay for that down the road.”
Eagle Lake resident Robert Davis suggested the board look long and hard at closing the elementary schools in Eagle Lake and Wallagrass and transferring students to the Fort Kent Elementary School for further budget savings.
“You’d have more opportunities for the children in Fort Kent than they have in Eagle Lake or Wallagrass,” Davis said. “If you don’t start the [school] consolidation discussion now, we will be at the same place next year, and that will not do the taxpayers any service.”
For their part, residents in Eagle Lake and Wallagrass have started the process of withdrawing from SAD 27, and a public hearing on that is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the Wallagrass Elementary School.
The $12.1 million budget proposal includes a local tax contribution of $4.6 million.
“We know we have more work to do and are hoping this budget will pass and we have a chance to move forward,” Charette said. “We are asking for that chance and for people to please consider zero is zero.”
