School board OKs $7.16M budget

Referendum will be Aug. 25

By Stuart Hedstrom

Staff Writer

GUILFORD — The SAD 4 school board took another step in the budget process for the 2015-16 academic year by approving a spending plan totaling $7,162,270 — with a local assessment of $3,672,811 — during a meeting on Aug. 11 at Piscataquis Community Elementary School. The budget was scheduled to be voted on by residents during the district meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 18 and the figure approved moves to a referendum in Abbot, Cambridge, Guilford, Parkman, Sangerville and Wellington on Tuesday, Aug. 25.

The budget will be the third brought to SAD 4 voters in the last several months, with the spending plan reduced each time. On July 29 the second budget, totaling a little more than $7.2 million with a local assessment of approximately $3,736,000, was voted down at the polls.

The spending plan presented at the Aug. 18 district budget meeting is down by just under $195,500 from 2014-15 — detailed financial information is available at www.sad4.org. The combined town assessment is up by 4.58 percent, ranging from the smallest increase of 3.82 percent for Cambridge to 6.15 percent for Parkman.

“On the 25th is the vote in the towns,” Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick said. When asked she said the budget is passed or not passed by a district-wide vote, regardless if the no votes have a majority in one community.

Board Chair Cinthia Hoak thanked the budget committee, school board and public for all of the hard work on the 2015-16 spending plan. “Let us pass this budget and we will work on the bigger hits for next year,” she said. Hoak also asked her colleagues to encourage SAD 4 residents to vote “yes” on the proposed budget.

A portion of the school budget is earmarked for the district’s share of the Piscataquis Valley Adult Education Collaborative operations. This approximate $43,480 figure has remained the same for SAD 4 throughout the budget process, but needs to be formally approved by the school board for each budget and another affirmative motion was made and passed on Aug. 11.

In other business, the school board approved the acceptance of $4,390 from the William Appleyard Trust Fund for purchasing science and technology supplies at Piscataquis Community High School.

“This is money from a grant that becomes available each year,” Hoak said. She said the funds allow for the purchase of equipment “not normally in the budget.”

District Technology Director Crystal Priest said examples of purchases from William Appleyard Trust Fund monies are microscope improvements and the previous year “we used it to upgrade the sound system in the gym.”

In her report, Kirkpatrick said earlier in the day she heard that murder suspect Robert Burton, who had been on the run from law enforcement for about two months in the SAD 4 region, had surrendered at the county jail. Kirkpatrick said she called the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department and “I said ‘do you have somebody in custody’ and they said ‘yes we do.’”

“I think a lot of stress and tension in the area will hopefully subside now,” she said, with students returning to school later in the month.

Kirkpatrick said several weeks prior a malfunction with the water fountain near the PCES lobby caused the area to flood overnight, damaging some floors and destroying some documents. “The flood, we are still working on it,” she said, saying the conference room has been retiled and fans have been running in the lobby to help expedite the drying.

“It was wonderful to watch everyone pull together and make it work,” she said as maintenance staff from across the district and other employees pitched in during the clean-up process. Kirkpatrick said the insurance adjustor will be back and “we hope to have it all up and running before the start of school.”