OXFORD – Meeting in a special session Monday, the SAD 17 Board of Directors approved a revised budget warrant reflecting $130,000 less than anticipated in state General Purpose Aid. The vote comes one week after the board signed the original warrant in advance of a May 25 public hearing on the budget and a June 8 referendum vote.

The revised budget of $30,382,658 reflects a 1.84 percent total increase over last year. The original budget reflected a 2.28 percent total increase.

“We came in with the most conservative budget in many years, and then we had to cut it $130,000 more,” said Cathy Fanjoy, district business manager.

Local assessments – reflecting an average 4.67 percent increase – will remain identical.

The district’s projections were based on Gov. John Baldacci’s tax reform package estimate of $750 million for General Purpose Aid for 2004-05.

“We felt the governor’s budget was solid because of the democratic majority” in the Legislature, said SAD 17 Supt. Mark Eastman.

Instead, the Legislature’s final GPA appropriation, announced Thursday, was $740.4 million, a difference of $10 million statewide.

The eight district towns had already received their projected assessments for the local share of school funding, and “I didn’t feel it was fair to go back to the towns” to ask them to help make up the deficit, said Eastman.

Eastman passed around a May 6 bulletin from the Maine School Management Association decrying the Legislature’s decision to make the $10 million cut to the governor’s $750 million GPA proposal.

The $10 million cut killed Baldacci’s plan to work toward regionalization of services by creating a $3.7 million Efficient Delivery of Services Fund.

Eastman said the Budget Committee met earlier Monday evening to decide how to trim $130,000 from the budget.

Among the cuts were $25,000 to the contingency fund, $30,000 for a new transportation position and $5,000 for a foreign language pilot program at the elementary school level.

A total of $37,000 will be saved from a $50,000 plan to resurface the high school athletic track. The resurfacing will still be done, but it will be done on a lease-purchase plan, requiring $10,000 a year, Eastman said.