BETHEL – With about two dozen taxpayers watching, SAD 44 directors detailed the proposed fiscal 2005 budget of $9,339,839.

The Monday hearing gave residents of Andover, Bethel, Greenwood, Newry and Woodstock a chance to comment on the spending plan and ask questions.

The budget going before district voters on Tuesday, June 8, is up $432,749 or 4.85 percent over last year’s.

Superintendent David Murphy opened this hearing this way: “These are tough times for towns and schools across the state and SAD 44 is no exception. Challenges are incredible for all schools and we learned at the last minute that we were faced with a late cut in state funding of about $26,000. To offset this we met and cut some planned programs amounting to $55,000 down to about $26,000 to help hold our original proposal to the 4.86 percent.”

He continued: “We did add some costs with $3,000 going for media relations to keep our communities better informed and $6,000 in Schedule B positions for after school programs, but there are still a lot of things absent from this budget that this board had hoped to have. We kept things we knew were in the best interest of our kids and cut where we felt we could,” he said.

Woodstock Selectman Steve Bies countered, “With the budget going up 4.9 percent every year, it squeezes out many things we need to do for our towns. I cannot support any increase this year and I urge people to go to the polls and vote this budget down. Vote yes on question one as that is concerning the state increasing its school funding, but defeat question number three. Please give us a budget for one year with no increase in the local assessment.”

Murphy responded that the district has no control over 83.14 percent of the costs for the coming school year, such items as $6,869,683 in salaries and benefits, $229,642 for the Region 9 assessment, $52,753 in insurance, $474,347 in debt service and $139,090 for fuel.

Resident Arla Patch supported the budget saying, “I don’t see any way we cannot support this budget without getting into greater trouble in another year or two.”

Director Marcel Pollack said the budget as written will bring good education to district children.

“We have a whole new way of preparing our students to take their place in the world. The state is going from manufacturing jobs to the technologies and, no matter what we go into, people must be better educated. This country has fallen behind the rest of the world and this reflects that something is wrong in our schools, and I hope you will support what we have done,” said Pollack.