Buckle up and ride it out, there will be no easy way for RSU 12 to change partners or tweak rules.
Such seems to be the message from several quarters, following the Jan. 26 rejection of the fourth proposed 2010 budget for the regional school unit also known as Sheepscot Valley RSU 12. It contains the towns of Wiscasset, Westport Island, Alna, Whitefield, Somerville, Chelsea, Windsor and Palermo.
Supt. Greg Potter said this week his next step will be to have an attorney from Drummond & Woodsum attend the board’s Feb. 11 meeting at Somerville School “to discuss a potential strategy. The message will be we have to continue to attempt to get a budget passed. We may have an option of getting two budgets passed in late April or early May,” Potter said.
The floundering 2010 budget might be resubmitted along with a “first shot at the 2010-11 budget,” which he expects to be from three to five percent lower than at present. Airing the next fiscal year’s budget early provides time for a second try should voters reject it, he said.
Potter described the latest failure at the polls “disappointing, but every time (there is a vote) it gets closer.” That improvement (448-400, compared to 599-810 in September) is “encouraging.”
Potter said he and the RSU 12 board’s finance committee chairman, Jerry Nault, attended Legislative hearings last week before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on LD 1739, “an act to remove the requirement that the annual budget of a regional school unit must be approved at a budget validation referendum.”
On Tuesday, that bill came out of committee unanimously “ought not to pass.” Potter said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Howard McFadden (R-Dennysville), “asked to have it withdrawn,” after testimony was offered.
Potter indicated another “catch-all” bill, LD 570, “an act to improve the laws governing the consolidation of school administrative units,” sponsored by Rep. Edward Finch (D-Fairfield) and held over from last year, played a part in putting LD 1739 to rest. But the main driver was the consolidation law itself, because it allows voters a chance to choose in 2011 whether they want to keep the validation portion of the budget approval process.
That question will be part of an upcoming referendum vote, said Potter.
The superintendent said he and Nault testified in support of the concept behind 1739, that there should be a cut-off point in sending a budget to voters because they can repeatedly turn it down otherwise.
“It appears the state should consider some kind of modification,” said Potter, not necessarily removing the validation process, but following the school administration district (SAD) model. SAD law waived the validation vote requirement after three failed attempts.
Potter said he’d like to see this model adopted, “then you’d go to a meeting and have an end point before you’re in the middle of your fiscal year.” He called such an approach a “fair compromise” between those favoring sound school administration and those supporting voter rights. “Nobody wants to interfere with voter rights,” Potter said.
Most of all, “the law would have to change to allow them to get out (of their unit) and they still have two more years before they can get out,” he said, referring to the consolidation law’s mandate that units stay together for three years. “Then they would have to go back to a regional planning process after they get out of the one they’re in” before they could join with another, he said.
Even with Rep. Lisa Miller’s bill (LD 1732), an act to allow a municipality to withdraw from a regional school unit, Rier said, “Withdrawal is a complicated process. (Towns agreeing to be in a unit) have taken on responsibilities they can’t walk away from.”
Rier said he has encouraged RSU 12 administrators “for some time” to examine the legal implications of operating on a budget that isn’t approved. (The unit uses the budget adopted at the most recent district meeting, which, in this instance, is that of Jan. 16.) “They need to get legal advice on what that means. They’re heading into the 2011 budget cycle and if they aren’t in agreement about cost sharing,” there could be “implications for municipalities that have taxed or overtaxed people.”
Rier recalled the case of a Newport SAD that went to a referendum vote seven or eight times before a budget was approved. “The final vote was in May and it was very contentious,” he said.
Rier stressed, “I don’t want to pretend I know what the implications are, but there are ramifications to not having an approved budget by the end of the year.”
The columns show a $1,457,529 reduction in the supplemental 2010-11 budget for RSU 12, a figure Supt. Potter says can be amended as further reduced by $400,000 “because we cut that amount when we knew we weren’t going to get it.”
Looking to develop the 2010-11 budget, he said, “Tentatively, we want to get a spending plan with between a three and five percent reduction. That will mean cutting $1.2 million or more from our expenditures.” That size cut will be “giving some relief” to taxpayers, he said.
Potter said he’s through tinkering with the 2010 budget, set at $26.1 million. “We’re done. We need to look at next year.” When round five rolls around for yet another district meeting and visit to the polls, “we’ll be fighting for every vote,” he said.
