Sheepscot Valley RSU 12 would have to increase its current budget by around $2 million or about 7.7 percent in order to maintain programs and services as they are today, according to Finance Committee Chair Jerry Nault.
Additionally, RSU 12 towns are facing a hike in their local contributions to the budget due to an expected reduction in state subsidy to the district, Nault said at the RSU’s board of directors meeting on April 11. Maintaining the district as-is would be an increase to towns’ contributions somewhere in the 15 percent range, he said.
Reasons for the increase in cost to maintain the status quo comes from several areas, including increases in staff contract and fuel oil costs, the expiration of grants that have funded several currently operating programs, and the anticipated shift of $90,000 in teacher retirement contributions to the district, board members and district officials said.
The RSU’s budget for the current year is $25,765,645, Nault said.
Nault said the budget committee has proposed about $750,000 in cuts to bring the budget down to just under $27 million. As proposed, the budget would be an increase of about $1.2 million or 4.8 percent.
At a 4.8 percent total budget increase, the towns’ would see an increase of around 10.4 percent, he said.
Included in the already proposed cuts are all sports programs except varsity teams, some staff positions including full and fractional cuts, and reductions to capital improvements, board members said.
None of the cuts are set in stone yet, Nault said.
The Finance Committee will be working on finding further savings, cuts, and revenue in an effort to reduce the effect of the budget by an additional $350,000, hopefully to bring to the board’s special meeting on the budget on Thursday, April 25, Nault said.
If the $350,000 can be found, the increase to the budget would be about 3 percent and an 8 to 9 percent increase to towns, he said.
The district is facing the equivalent situation to towns at risk of losing state revenue sharing, Nault said.
“Every citizen in every town should stand up and say something,” said board member Joan Morin. “They need to fund education.”
If people are not willing to speak up against cuts to subsidy, they don’t have the right to say they don’t want higher taxes, Morin said. Reducing the subsidy is not fair to the communities, to the students, or to the taxpayers, she said.
The RSU 12 board of directors has a special meeting for work on the budget scheduled for Thursday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m., location to be determined.