BETHEL – Municipal officials and SAD 44 directors are expected to wrap up their 2005-06 budgets in separate meetings Monday night, May 2, in Bethel.
In a joint meeting Monday night, Bethel selectmen and the Budget Committee removed $256,088 in capital improvement projects from the proposed $2.8 million budget, said Town Manager Scott Cole.
Their goal, he said, was to pare $309,439 to meet the state’s new municipal property taxation levy limit of $1,422,203, “but we ran out of time.”
As of Monday night, selectmen and the committee had pared the expenditure budget to $2,615,142.
Directors at the 2-hour SAD 44 meeting also ran out of time, but their task was a bit different from that of the municipal officials.
At a previous meeting, SAD 44’s Finance Committee set the 2005-06 budget at $9.3 million for district taxpayers in Andover, Bethel, Greenwood, Newry and Woodstock.
They eliminated a Telstar Regional High School college guidance counselor and English teacher, and a fifth-grade teacher at Crescent Park School.
Additional staff cuts included a two-thirds time elementary school guidance counselor; a Telstar education technician I, health and physical education instructor and library education technician; a home economics position; two custodians; a half-time transportation position; and a half-time elementary position.
The Finance Committee also proposed shifting to a single bus run, with the district’s 19 buses carrying both secondary and elementary students.
“Given the severity of the cuts we’ve had to make, this isn’t feeling very good. Without question, we are experiencing the most difficult budget challenge in the history of this school system,” SAD 44 Superintendent David Murphy said of the 37-year-old district.
Murphy suggested Monday night that $142,500 could be saved from the budget by reducing the amount needed for some capital improvement projects, eliminating a $20,000 contingency budget, and saving $93,000 by deferring the start of a pre-kindergarten program to 2007.
During the ensuing discussion, Telstar High School Principal Shawn Lambert asked the board, “If you have to cut off your left leg or your right leg, which would you prefer?”
Lambert and Murphy then suggested that directors could use that $142,500 to restore the Telstar High School college guidance position, English teacher, and Crescent Park fifth-grade instructor.
“We’ve traded facilities for kids and we’ve traded contingencies for kids,” Murphy said.
Bethel Director Jill Rundle concurred with Murphy and Lambert.
“Without college guidance, our students are lost in the woods,” she said.
“Can you live without a left leg? I suppose you can, but that’s not doing the best thing for the kids,” she added.
A series of straw polls conducted by Chairwoman Becky Cummings of Bethel revealed that the board appeared to support restoring the three positions.
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