BETHEL – Town Clerk Christen Mason breathed a sigh of relief late Tuesday afternoon while taping pages from SAD 44’s budget referendum warrant to the town office window.
Moments before, selectmen held a special board meeting to correct the error they made at Monday night’s meeting when they unanimously refused to sign the school warrant.
“I guess I was, like, in shock. Like, What do I do now?’ It was a little scary,” Mason said.
It was also the first time in the 10 years she’s served as Bethel’s clerk that selectmen had tried to do the impossible with the district warrant.
“I didn’t really know what to think. By not signing it, I couldn’t post it, so, then, nobody could vote on it. I couldn’t even get any ballots,” she said.
Mason said that on Tuesday morning, she notified SAD 44 Superintendent David Murphy of the “crisis.” Murphy, in turn, she said, contacted the district’s attorney, who contacted the town’s attorney, Geoff Hole, in Portland.
Hole called Mason first, then selectmen’s Chairman Stan Howe, who hastily scheduled a 5 p.m. special board meeting.
“The word came down from the brick building in Portland, Sign the damn thing,'” Selectman Don Bennett said after the board voted 4-0 to reconsider Monday’s 5-0 vote, and repeated the same tally to sign the warrant. Then they promptly signed it, although one selectman jokingly asked if he should sign upside down in protest.
“I don’t think anyone should take this to mean five selectmen being stupid. It was frustration,” Bennett said.
Frustration over a proposed $9.9 million school budget and increasing state and federal mandates, he said, drove the board – Dennis Doyon, Bennett, Howe, Reggie Brown and Jack Cross – to not sign the document. Cross was absent Tuesday.
“We are seeing more increases, more increases, and less local control. Like Dennis said, it seems like things keep getting mandated to us. A budget of almost $10 million? It was a little sense of frustration,” Bennett said of Monday night’s vote.
According to the SAD 44 warrant, which Andover, Bethel, Greenwood, Newry and Woodstock voters get at the polls on Tuesday, June 13, the district seeks to appropriate, raise and spend $9,911,861 from July 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, to cover the cost of educating its students from kindergarten through grade 12.
The district also seeks to appropriate and spend $220,269, and raise $97,850 as the local share for adult education.
What also upset selectmen was a 7.34-percent hike in Bethel’s assessment over last year, a $264,000 net increase, Howe said. To get $3,179,391 from the state for public education, Bethel must raise a minimum of $1,466,066 through taxation.
Both Bennett and Howe said Town Manager Scott Cole advised the board that they had no choice, they had to sign the district warrant.
Mason said selectmen mistakenly thought that by signing the warrant they would be endorsing the budget.
“But really, it’s just giving townspeople the opportunity to vote on it,” she added.
Still, Bennett said he thinks that Monday night’s balk might rouse residents.
“Maybe a few voters will see this as controversy, and say, Gosh, dear, maybe we should pay attention to this whole school budget,” Bennett said.
Superintendent Murphy and district Business Manager Bruce Powell did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
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