MINOT — Selectmen got word this week that they don’t have to ask town meeting voters on March 6 for approval to pay the $20,421 the town was billed as its share of Regional School Unit 16’s start-up costs.

Town auditor Lori-Anne Wilson of Smith and Associates wrote in an e-mail dated Feb. 20 that the money was appropriated through the school assessment through Jan. 31, 2010, and their remaining fund balance as of June 30, 2009.

Selectmen took no action to add the RSU start-up bill to the warrant, but they questioned whether they were on the right course.

“There is no sense in it at all,” Selectman Dean Campbell said.

He noted that at the end of each fiscal year, money that hasn’t been spent is either rolled over to reduce taxes in the next year or goes into the town’s undesignated fund balance.

Campbell also noted that the school budget for the year ending June 30, 2009, was overdrafted in all lines and therefore, he wondered how there could be any fund balance.

“You use (what is left over) to lower taxes each year,” Campbell said. “There’s no slush fund, no piggy bank. You can’ t come in and say, ‘I want that money I didn’t spend 20 years ago.'”

Town Administrator Arlen Saunders said that according to the auditors, more than $200,000 of the town’s fund balance came from school accounts but that he, after looking at audit reports covering the past several years, couldn’t figure out just where this money might be.

Campbell acknowledged that Minot should pay its portion of the start-up costs, but said that he, too, was unsure the money was in the fund balance.

“I want to make sure what we are doing is right,” Campbell said.

He said Wilson was scheduled to be at the Town Office this Thursday and he would try to get the matter clarified then.

Selectman Steve French said he is scheduled for a day off Thursday and figured he ought to be there.

“I need Lori-Anne to explain it to me,” French said.

To comply with the state’s school consolidation law, Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland formed a single school district, a process that cost $111,462. The Maine Department of Education agreed to pay $10,369 of those costs, leaving school officials with bills totaling $101,093 and no money with which to pay them. 

Poland town officials stepped in and paid the bills and now they want Minot and Mechanic Falls to pay their shares.

In other business, selectmen turned down a request from RSU 16 Superintendent Dennis Duquette who asked that Minot return $100,000 from the town’s fund balance to help stabilize school funding for 2010-11, which Duquette noted is facing a $2.1 million shortfall. 

Duquette said he was also asking Mechanic Falls and Poland to return $100,000 each for the same purpose.

In turning down the request, selectmen noted their reservations regarding money the school thinks is in the fund balance, and suggested that if the RSU is in such dire financial straits, school officials could impose a pay freeze, which would save the district about $500,000.

Selectmen further noted that town employees in Mechanic Falls and Minot have already had their pay frozen for next year.