SAD 46 $12.9 million budget approved at district meeting

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    DEXTER — The first half of the School Administrative District 46 annual budget process went smoothly last week as voters easily passed a $12.95 million budget — $42,817 or .33 percent higher than last year.

    The sparsely-attended meeting at Ridge View Community School on June 5 took less than 45 minutes and only one resident had any questions for Superintendent Kevin Jordan or the Board of Directors.
    The second part took place on Tuesday, June 11 as voters went to the polls to ratify or reject the decision made at the public meeting. If recent history is any indication, the ballot results should parallel the voters’ preference at the budget session, according to Jordan. “Considering what we had to do in order to keep costs down, I don’t anticipate any problems getting it passed,” Jordan said.
    After Reggie Palmer was elected moderator of the meeting, Jordan outlined some of the steps he and the board took to hold the line on expenditures.
    “We took a lot of things into consideration – less state funding, loss of revenue sharing and the state’s decision to make local districts pick up more of the cost of staff retirement,” Jordan said.
    The toughest decision was to eliminate nine positions in the district, Jordan added. “Out of the last five years, we’ve reduced staff every year but one,” he said. Direct layoffs were minimized this year because of two retirements, one resignation and one leave of absence.
    In the last five years, Jordan said that the local share of school funding has increased by $149,225 while the state’s share has decreased $97,114. In addition, Anthem health insurance premiums have increased by 13 percent this year.
    Jordan also pointed out that SAD 46’s per-pupil expenditure is only $8,637 compared to a statewide average of $9,726.”We’re 174th out of 220 school units,” he said.
    SAD 46 has just over 1,000 students in four member towns plus some high school pupils from Harmony.
    Out of the 10 articles dealing directly with expenditures, six were lower than last year: Other Instruction (co-curricular, athletics, stipends, etc.), -$22,889; Student and Staff Support, -$16,947; System Administration, -$7,168; Transportation, -$11,627; Facilities Maintenance, -$104,001; and Debt Service, -$44,155.
    There were increases in the Regular Instruction account, $68,997; Special Ed, $44,850; and School Administration, $35,774.
    Dexter, the largest community in the four-town district, picks up around 61 percent of the cost of running SAD 46; Exeter and Garland, around 15 percent each; and Ripley, 9 percent.
    Steve Crane, who has been on the Board of Directors since 1996 and chairman for the past year, said that he was used to crafting difficult budgets “but this was over the top. We hated to eliminate those positions; but considering the economy and the lack of state and federal funds, we had no choice. I’m glad people who showed up tonight supported us.”