NEW GLOUCESTER – Next week’s joint meeting between municipal leaders of Gray and New Gloucester with the SAD 15 school board will launch preliminary discussions on next year’s school budget.
However, one school board member remains unconvinced of its merit.
Gray board member Tod Bennett said, “It’s not clear to me … what we will gain from this. We have spent a lot of time working with the town (Gray) on Pennell Institute and can’t make them happy. I really want to hear from citizens. Our administration spends thousands of hours developing the budget. The biggest thing we can do is get the public to get involved and come and partake in the budget process.”
SAD 15 covers Gray and New Gloucester, which each develop municipal budgets approved by voters. The budget for SAD 15 goes to voters in a June referendum in both towns.
Earlier this month, the Gray Town Council sent a letter to the school board stating its goal to either maintain or lower the mill rate (property tax rate) for fiscal year 2006.
The letter states, “As a 66.5 percent participant in the local contribution to the SAD, the town of Gray requests that you help us achieve our goal of a flat-to-reduced mill rate this year. This can be accomplished in many ways, but one is not at the sufferance of basic services for the town of Gray.”
“The district won’t subordinate itself to the municipality for what it needs to spend,” said school board Chairman Alan Rich of New Gloucester. “We know what we need to do to fund the best education for our students. We are a collection agency for what towns allow us to raise and spend.”
During the past two years, protracted talks between the board and Gray municipal leaders have included legal action over the disposal of Pennell Institute in Gray, which is a SAD 15 building as part of an educational trust established in the 1870s.
Gray is currently disputing an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office, which oversees educational trusts, in hopes to get the building back at no cost. The attorney general has advised the school district that the building can be sold at fair market value or traded for property of equal value with proceeds returned to the educational trust.
The joint meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Stimson Hall in Gray.
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