NEWPORT, Maine — Officials in RSU 19 are going back to the drawing board after voters in the district’s eight member towns rejected a proposed $24 million spending plan for the school year ahead.
The districtwide unofficial tally after Tuesday’s school budget validation referendum was 621 in favor of the budget and 1,158 opposed, interim Superintendent Ray Freve said Wednesday.
RSU 19 member towns are Newport, Corinna, Dixmont, Etna, Hartland, Palmyra, Plymouth and St. Albans.
According to voting results from the eight towns, Dixmont was the only town in which the budget had more yes than no votes, with 83 residents in favor and 48 opposed.
Residents also voted 1,093 to 658 in favor of continuing the budget validation referendum process for the next three years, Freve said.
The $24,297,761 budget plan that school officials developed for 2016-17 reflected an increase of $934,529 from this year, Freve said.
Had it passed, the local share for the eight member towns would have increased by about 16 percent, which a majority of voters apparently found unpalatable, Freve said.
Freve, who came on board in December, after this year’s budget was approved, attributed the budget increase largely to revenue projections that were “quite inflated,” including those for Medicare reimbursements and anticipated proceeds for the sale of land that never sold, and underbudgeted amounts for accounts that must be spent, including special education tuition.
“That put us in the red even before we began,” he said.
Freve said the board now must take another stab at the budget.
The district has been grappling with financial problems for years.
Earlier in the fiscal year, the district considered furlough days in an effort to make up for a $295,000 revenue shortfall, which forced the district to reduce overtime and fall behind on some bills.
In February, the Maine Education Association Benefits Trust stepped in after budget struggles forced the district to leave its health insurance premiums unpaid for several months.
The next month, however, district voters overwhelmingly voted to accept $69 million in state funding to overhaul the district’s aging school buildings.
The final tally was 3,092 in favor and 334 opposed. That money will allow the district to construct a building to house the district’s high school and middle school students, convert Sebasticook Valley and Somerset Valley middle schools into elementary schools and demolish several elementary schools that would be vacated.
The budget rejected by RSU 19 voters on Tuesday is not the first to suffer that fate.
In 2013, it took two referendum attempts to get a budget passed.
That was the second time in recent history that RSU 19 has had to ask taxpayers more than once to pass a budget or loan.
A $2.8 million stabilization loan failed twice at the polls before being approved in March of that year.