FARMINGTON – SAD 9 board of directors have cut and pasted the numbers and, after a month of budget deliberations, have agreed on a tentative budget for 2003-2004.
On Tuesday night, directors crunched the numbers and announced that the adopted tentative budget would be set at $21,239,979, a 2.3 percent increase over last year’s $20,765,361.
The new proposed amount is down $45,373 from the budget of $21,285,352 proposed by Superintendent Michael Cormier in late March.
The cuts have come from all over the budget, including $5,000 from the high school athletic department budget, which was approved overwhelmingly by directors Tuesday night.
Other decreases include axing $20,000 from the proposed $50,000 professional services budget, which includes legal expertise, despite a plea from Cormier that “this is a very dangerous place to cut that amount of money” as well as cutting the substitute caller position.
Early each day, the “sub caller” is responsible for coordinating with the principals throughout the district about what substitutes are needed and then placing calls to enough of the hundreds of area substitutes to get fill- ins. On any given day, Cormier has said, there are dozens of subs needed, sometimes more than 50 in one day.
Only board members Bob Flick and Robert Pullo were in favor of keeping the sub caller position on the books; the other 12 directors eliminated the position. The substitute calling tasks will now be placed in the laps of each individual principal, a projected savings of $12,500 annually.
The adult education budget has been set at $245,027.
Board members will now go out into the nine communities of the district and present the budget to the local taxpayers, who are responsible for coming up with just over $8.5 million to couple with the state’s allocation of just over $11.5 million.
Directors expect to glean feedback from these localized meetings which they will consider when sitting down again at the table to finalize the budget that will be voted on by taxpayers in June.
sdepoy@sunjournal.com
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