SAD 4 board sends budget to Oct. 26 district meeting

GUILFORD — The SAD 4 school board approved a 2016-17 budget totaling $6,879,013 during an Oct. 11 meeting at Piscataquis Community Elementary School.

The proposed spending plan – the fourth brought to residents in the last several months with previous budgets totaling just over $6,989,300, a little more than $7.1 million and nearly $6,878,000 – will be voted on during a district budget meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at PCES. The proceedings start with an information session at 6 p.m.

The figure approved at the end of the month will go to a referendum in the towns of Abbot, Cambridge, Guilford, Parkman, Sangerville and Wellington on Tuesday, Nov. 8 when these citizens head to the polls for the presidential and state referendum ballots. The school board normally meets on the second Tuesday of the month, but the director’s’ next regular session will be on Wednesday, Nov. 9.

“The overall expenditure from last year to this year is down $283,256.86, almost 4 percent,” Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick said, with the near $6.88 million total representing a 3.95 percent decrease from the 2016 academic year amount of just over $7,162,000.

Kirkpatrick said monies received from the state are down by approximately $214,700 for a figure of a little more than $2.8 million, while SAD 4 will be required to raise more in order to receive the state funding. “They are telling us we are going to give you less and you are going to need to raise more,” she said, as the local required allocation is up by $13,000-plus to just under $3,177,800.

Between the local required allocation, approximately $450,700 in local additional monies and SAD 4’s near $44,350 share of the Piscataquis Valley Adult Education Cooperative, the combined local assessment between the half dozen district communities is $3,672,811 or the same as in 2015-16.

“The overall changes to the towns, it’s a net zero,” Kirkpatrick said, saying assessments are based on state valuation and pupil counts.

The individual town assessments are split with half having a lower total under the proposed 2016-17 budget and the other three facing an assessment increase. Decreased assessments would be for Abbot at just over $12,800 to nearly $710,000, $7,600-plus less for Sangerville at a little more than $774,600 and Cambridge’s contribution would be down by nearly $1,400 to a little less than $232,800.

Assessment increases are approximately $15,900 more for Parkman at about $553,800, a $4,345 increase to about $194,575 for Wellington and the assessment for Guilford would be up by $1,570 to a figure of a little more than $1.2 million.

During the Oct. 11 meeting the directors approved the recommendation to create a full-time assistant principal/director of student activities with the position to be advertised immediately.

Kirkpatrick said the assistant principal/director of student activities would work between the elementary and secondary schools. The job would be split 60 and 40 percent between the assistant principal and student activities respectively.

In other business, Kirkpatrick said a pair of board members from Sangerville have stepped down. Nichole Martin submitted her resignation earlier in the month and William Rowe wrote in his letter that he would be resigning as of Oct. 14.

Rowe, who cited frustration with the state’s requirements for school districts as his reason for stepping down, said Sangerville is scheduled to have a special town meeting on Oct. 27 to fill the pair of vacant school board seats.