FARMINGTON — A community effort is underway to bring people from the 10 Regional School Unit 9 towns together to look at issues from all sides and find ways to make positive changes.

The first event for the group, Working Together For Change, is a potluck dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, at the Food Court at Mt. Blue Campus on Seamon Road in Farmington. The high school and Foster Career and Technical Education Center are at the campus.

People are encouraged to bring food to share and to attend the school board meeting that will follow at 7 p.m.

The impetus for the group was the big divide over the budget, said Tami Labul, a school board director from Farmington.

The first budget proposal failed and the current one passed by 37 votes. The budget decreased school taxes for eight of the 10 towns.

RSU 9 towns are Chesterville, Farmington, Industry, New Sharon, New Vineyard, Starks, Temple, Vienna, Weld and Wilton.

Labul read a letter during a school board meeting about creating a community work group or task force to look at issues and find solutions. The ideas include going to Augusta to try to get the school funding formula changed, writing more grants and holding fundraisers for tax relief.

The debates during the budget process were only partly about money, Labul said in her letter.

“The bigger issues, as I see it, are the divide,” she said at the time. “The mindset of ‘us versus them,’ the idea that one side will win and one side will lose. I would argue that the mindset means that no one wins — and everyone loses.”

A lot of concern was voiced by taxpayers that the budget set this year is the base to start next year and what happens if revenues are reduced.

“We all know that this issue is not going to magically resolve itself in the months ahead,” Labul said during the meeting.

She and others who have stepped up to help are getting everyone involved: taxpayers, school board members, business owners, town officials, students and community members.

The effort is growing with more people involved in developing the public group and more than 165 members signing on to the Facebook group.

The idea is for people to talk to others with ideas that may be different from their own and create a dialogue. Community events such as the supper would bring people together who don’t ordinarily come into the school to socialize with their neighbors, to meet different people and start gathering information, Labul said.

“We all live in this community together and we need to work together,” she said.

The group is trying to make sure it provides ways for people who are not on the internet and not on Facebook to become involved and to find ways to communicate with the community.

“I am hoping to accomplish a much smoother budget season when people can listen and hear each other and come up with a budget that everyone can support and feel good about,” Labul said. “One of the other things we want to look at is our legislation and getting our representatives involved.”

They want to develop legislation “to help property taxpayers and improve the school funding formula so that we don’t have schools and taxpayers pitted against each other competing for the same piece of the pie,” she said.

Anyone who wants to be involved or has questions about the effort can contact Labul at tlabul@mtbluersd.org or call 207-441-1595.

dperry@sunmediagroup.net.

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