MONMOUTH – When voters decide whether to accept the proposed school budget, they will not have to consider a tax increase. There won’t be one.
The School Department presented the proposed 2005-06 budget, which calls for no tax hike for education costs, to about 40 people at a public forum Monday night.
Voters will decide the school budget and town issues by secret ballot on June 14. This is the first year Monmouth will not have a town meeting. That change was approved at the town meeting last year.
The total proposed school budget is $6,383,490, up 2.78 percent from $6,210,785 last year. The amount to be raised by taxation is $2,594,895, the same figure that was approved last year. Anticipated miscellaneous revenues are $85,000. Funding from the Maine Department of Education is $3,703,595, an increase of $215,107 over one year ago.
“Our expectations were that we expected a windfall from the state. It’s not as much as we anticipated. They said they were going to fund us at 55 percent” and they did not, said Superintendent Stephen Cottrell. State funding this year is 84 percent of the 55 percent Monmouth expected, he explained.
He said the School Department “is keeping the status quo. No new programs. No new people” to operate the school system.
The budget calls for an expenditure of $21,000 for a first-year lease payment on a new bus. Cottrell said it would cost about $65,000 to purchase a bus. He said leasing will make the annual bite out of the budget smaller. The superintendent also said outsourcing bus transportation is a possible cost-saving measure in the future.
A possible variable to the budget that was questioned by several people is $54,364 that an independent auditor retained by the Winthrop School Department said Monmouth owes Winthrop. The two school systems shared a hot lunch program for several years, and the program was discontinued in 2001. The amount Monmouth owed Winthrop in 2001 has been disputed. Monmouth has paid Winthrop about $39,000.
Another hearing on the school and municipal budgets is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. April 13, at Monmouth Academy.
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