Nobleboro resident William “Bill” Soares (center) requests voters cut $400,000 from a proposed $1.4 million special education budget at a special town meeting on Saturday, May 17. Soares said due to the town’s education budget, residents have been struggling with increases in property taxes that are unsustainable. (Piper Pavelich photo)
With town officials and many community members gathered in one place, some Nobleboro voters took the opportunity to voice their concerns regarding the town’s rising education budget during a special town meeting on Saturday, May 17.
Voters gathered in the Nobleboro Central School gym to consider the town’s education budget, which totals $5,568,896.02, an increase of $495,840.94 or 9.77%. Despite attempts to amend the special education and transportation budgets, voters ultimately approved the total education budget as presented.
Resident William “Bill” Soares requested voters cut the special education budget by $400,000. The special education budget proposed by the Nobleboro School Committee totaled $1,402,500.57, up $314,174.02 or 28.87%.
Soares said taxpayers have been hit annually for the last decade or so with increases in property taxes that are unsustainable.
“If we continue with this … It’s going to mean that people are just going to be run out of town, they won’t be able to afford it,” he said. “Either we need to join a bigger organization or a bigger group or we have to change something big, because we’re just doing this year after year now.”
Soares said to attendees that if they “let things go by, we’re just propagating double-digit percent increases each year.”
“What am I proposing? We stop here,” he said. “We object to something; that says, ‘Go back and do something.’ I don’t care what it is, but we can’t absorb 12% (increases to) taxes year over year over year and continue with this, and making a statement now is the only ways that that’s going to happen.”
Soares wasn’t the only one who voiced displeasure with unsustainable rises in property taxes. Resident Bob Lane told attendees they could “vote how you want” but that the town needs “to take a step back and look at the whole process” of creating and funding education budgets.
“It seems to me that we’ve got to figure out some answers and some better strategies for addressing special education to bring these costs under control,” Lane said. “We can’t continue … We’ve got four years of special education budgets going up double-digits. I don’t see anything that tells me that’s going to slow down.”
Nobleboro School Committee Chair Matt Benner noted that reducing the special education budget by $400,000 is equivalent to defunding special education services for three students. He said he understood the concerns residents were voicing, but that the town is legally required to give students a proper education.
“I understand this budget is way up, it’s been up every year, but until we figure out exactly as a district, as a town, and as a school board how we can fix the brokenness in special education in the entire state and nation, then these are expenses we have to figure out how to deal with,” Benner said.
Aside from the special education budget, the transportation budget was a topic some residents voiced concerns with, including Angela Achorn.
The transportation budget is $359,100, up $5,600 or 1.58% over last year. The budget includes a new contract with First Student Inc., of Augusta. With the new contract, Nobleboro will no longer be providing a bus for students to Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.
“Cutting transportation is just as detrimental to education as cutting teachers or academic programs. Whether the transportation is for four, 14, or 44 kids, if they can’t get to school, they can’t thrive,” said Achorn.
According to Benner, the school committee has been talking about eliminating the bus to Lincoln Academy for almost three years. The town is not required to supply a bus to the school, said Benner, as children in Nobleboro have “school choice,” meaning they can choose which secondary institution they would like to attend.
He noted the town doesn’t run buses to Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro and Cony High School in Augusta, where many Nobleboro students attend school.
“This isn’t a last-minute decision,” he said. “Offering a bus to one school that we actually aren’t contracted to, we felt, wasn’t necessary, and it was a place we could actually cut that didn’t hurt actual learning.”
Benner said the school committee is working with Jeff Burroughs, Lincoln Academy’s head of school, to come up with a cost-effective solution. He said he’s hopeful Lincoln Academy will provide a bus to Nobleboro, as it does with Whitefield and Jefferson.
Aside from the special education and transportation budgets, the remainder of the education budget was approved with little commentary.
The regular instruction budget totals $2,390,086.04, a decrease of $26,656.48 or 1.10%, and the facilities maintenance budget is $444,563.78, an increase of $55,663.97 or 14.31%.
The student and staff support budget is $410,960.90, an increase of $44,664.27 or 12.19%; the school administration budget is $271,736.35, an increase of $24,269.36 or 9.81%; and the system administration budget is $194,285.99, up $63,240.76 or 48.26%.
The other instruction budget is $61,462.40, an increase of $4,885.05 or 8.63%, and the section of the budget pertaining to food service totals $34,000, an increase of $10,000 or 41.67%.
The town is expected to receive a state subsidy of $626,617.62, an increase of $61,919.18 or 10.96%. The Nobleboro School Committee is recommending a fund beginning balance of $77,642.13, a decrease of $82,357.87 or 51.47% from last year.
With those figures in mind, taxpayers are left to raise $4,864,636.27, an increase of $516,279.63 or 11.87%.
Also during the May 17 meeting, voters authorized the Nobleboro Select Board to repay a $121,000 loan that was taken out to help fund the reconstruction of the Cotton Stream culvert on Bayview Road. The loan will be paid off over the course of two years with an annual interest rate of 5.05%, for an annual payment of $64,271.83. The first payment will be funded by taxpayers during the 2026 fiscal year.
Voters also approved raising and appropriating $20,000 to a capital reserve account for the future construction of a fireproof vault. Nobleboro Select Board Chair Jon Chadwick said the town is required by state law to have a vault to store vital records in, and he is gathering quotes for the project.
