FORT KENT, Maine — After failing multiple times at referendum, SAD 27 and the Madawaska School Department budgets both passed on Tuesday.
Officials with the two school departments had proposed a combined seven budgets since June, each passing at town meeting but voted down at subsequent referendums.
On Tuesday, SAD 27 voters in Fort Kent, St. Francis, St. John Plantation, New Canada, Wallagrass and Eagle Lake — by a total 710-547 vote — approved a $10.9 million budget which included $4.2 million in local tax contributions.
In Madawaska, the $6 million budget and attached $2.5 million local share passed 502-447.
In SAD 27, officials had reduced the budget originally proposed last June from $12.1 million and Tuesday’s successful vote was the fourth time residents went to the polls to decide its fate.
Madawaska voters had twice turned down a proposed school budget before passing it Tuesday at the referendum.
“There was really an all-out, concerted effort to show the people we had a very transparent and fiscally responsible budget,” Madawaska School Department Superintendent Gisele Dionne said Wednesday morning. “This is something we have been focused on and it will be nice to now be freed up to do other things.”
SAD 27 still is facing the possible withdrawal of two member towns as Wallagrass and Eagle Lake continue with the formal process of splitting off from the district.
At the same time, the board already has decided to close the St. Francis Elementary School and is looking at closing the elementary schools in Wallagrass and Eagle Lake as future cost-saving measures.
“We have a lot to think about as we move forward,” Lucie Tabor, SAD 27 director of finance, said Wednesday morning. “We know we can’t move forward the way we have been doing business and we have the impacts of the potential withdrawals we have to think about.”
