At a special budget meeting held April 28 at the Whitefield Elementary School, the RSU 12 Board of Directors passed a motion for a .11 percent increase in the fiscal year 2012-13 school budget.
RSU 12 (the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit) is made up of schools in the eight towns of Alna, Wiscasset, Westport Island, Palermo, Somerville, Whitefield, Windsor and Chelsea.
The proposed increase of $27,500 will fund a weeklong curriculum initiative and will be an increase to the proposed $25,103,272 budget.
“I am very pleased to see the local contributions only going up by about one half of one percent,” said RSU 12 Supt. Gregory Potter. “So we are almost flat to locals despite losing nearly another $1.1 million in state GPA (General Purpose Aid) subsidy when compared to last year.”
In an email to The Lincoln County News April 29, Potter wrote the RSU was on “very solid” financial footing.
“We were able to use some anticipated fund balance to offset the need to raise much more from locals next year [for fiscal year 2012-13],” Potter said.
In addition, RSU 12 has applied over $400,000 in Federal Jobs Bill funds to Regular Instruction line item, which Potter said has allowed “us to retain teaching and other staff” that might otherwise have been reduced.
Despite a generally positive short term, Potter cautioned that the fiscal year [FY 2012-13] would likely pose “significant” challenges for the district as an expected federal funding “cliff” hits. The district will have approximately $723,000 in interest payments due on a new Chelsea school.
“That money is essentially cash in and cash out for us,” said Potter. “So our budget overall is up slightly. To accomplish this, we had to reduce operational costs in other areas, especially regular instruction and system administration.”
According to Potter, if the projected interest payments did not have to be shown in the 2012-13 budget, the operational budget expense figure would be in the “$24.4 million range” which he said was a better way to compare 2011, pegged at $25.1, to the proposed 2012 figure.
While the mil rate impact will rise for Palermo and Somerville, it is expected to remain flat for Alna, Chelsea, Westport Island, Windsor, Wiscasset, and Whitefield.
The RSU 12 Board is scheduled to hold a Regional Budget Adoption Meeting, Sat., June 4 at the Windsor School Gymnasium. The Regional Validation Vote will take place on Tues., June 14 for all RSU 12 communities.
