MADAWASKA, Maine — A divided town finance committee has chosen to recommend passage of a fourth school budget proposal for the current school year when residents take it up at a special town meeting on Dec. 6.
The $6,163,049 proposed budget, however, is the same one that residents rejected at a budget validation vote on Oct. 18.
“The budget hasn’t changed and neither has my opinion,” finance committee member Dave Morin said at the Nov. 28 meeting, citing an increase from last year’s school budget and its impact on taxpayers as reasons for his vote in dissent. He was one of two members opposed, while five agreed to recommend passage.
“I understand it’s difficult to find cuts in the budget,” Morin said, but passing on this year’s budget problems to next year has happened too often.
Residents have approved three previous 2016-17 school budget proposals during the town meeting phase of the two step process but defeated each during the validation vote.
Since the first $6,389,209 proposal in May, the budget has been reduced twice — first by $68,000 and then by another $158,160 — before voters rejected the last offering.
Finance committee member Derrick Hebert, who also voted against recommending passage, said residents have told him they are tired of having the school board and school administrators “nickel and dime” the budget cuts.
“They want to see the 85 percent of the budget addressed,” he said, referring to the teacher salary portion of the budget.
But committee Chairman Steve Collard countered that the kinds of cuts residents were calling for could not be done in the short amount of time required for the current fiscal year budget.
“I want to start working on next year’s budget,” Collard said. “That’s where the cost savings impacts will be.
“We want to look to see if consolidating the two [Madawaska] schools is viable. But, that won’t happen before this year’s budget is finally approved,” he said.
Committee member Joel Dechaine, who supported moving the budget forward, said he understands the hard work that went into crafting the budget and the efforts at finding cuts, but he wasn’t sure that would be enough to satisfy some voters.
“It doesn’t feel right, putting the same budget to the people as last time,” he said. “I think it’s sort of insulting to voters.”
School committee Chair Bev Madore was among the audience members Monday evening. Regrading work on the 2017-18 budget, Madore said school committee members are going to seriously look at getting the department’s budget in line with the state recommended minimum. Getting to that amount, referred to as Maine’s ED 279, has been among one of the demands from those not supporting the latest school budget.
“People will need to realize that would mean a lot of things get cut,” Madore said. “It would be a bare bones minimum.”
The state’s ED 279 recommendations do not include things such as extracurricular and sports programs, and it also affects transportation.
School Superintendent Gisele Dionne, also in the audience Monday, said, “We need to get off the budget treadmill. There is other important work to be done.”
Dionne told committee members that the work being done with the other two St. John Valley school systems in Fort Kent, and St. Agatha/Frenchville, as part of a new strategic planning process, is likely to lead to future savings and improved academics.
However, that will not happen overnight, she added.
“Now is when we need to be planning for next year’s budget,” she said. “We still have a school system to run.”
Regardless of the politics behind the school budget process, “we do our best for the students,” Dionne said.
The next special town meeting/public hearing to vote on the proposed school budget is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6, at the Madawaska Middle/High School library.