SAD 4 budget vote tonight

To the Editor:

A month ago, the voters of SAD 4 in the budget validation referendum turned down the educational budget of the district with a resounding 75 percent “no” vote. I have watched with interest the district meetings since that date to see what the school committee and administration would do in response to that message, which originally proposed to increase the school assessment to all towns by 11 to 13 percent.

The financial sub-committee met two more times and did essentially nothing to review and reduce the budget. At the first meeting, the superintendent said they would wait until they knew exactly what the state was going to send. She also indicated they wouldn’t fill a newly created position that would yield some modest savings. Beyond that the committee, in one quick knee-jerk move, eliminated this year’s summer school with no discussion whatsoever of the impact on the students who needed the summer school to prepare them for the next grade. What will happen to those students in the fall remains to be seen.

At the second meeting, the superintendent confirmed an additional $115,000 would be coming from the state and that was factored into the budget. That was it; no further action from the sub-committee.

At the full school committee meeting on last Tuesday night, the school committee without any substantive discussion or questions voted unanimously to pass on the new budget to the district taxpayers to be voted on at the district budget meeting tonight at the elementary school in Guilford at 7 p.m. An informational meeting will be held just before at 6 p.m.

The overall budget is reduced in the vicinity of 2 percent; however, the real issue is what is happening to the assessments to the towns. Those have been reduced now to less than 8 percent, with Parkman topping the list at a 7.98 percent increase. That may sound like a decent reduction from the beginning, but these kinds of increases annually have been occurring for years now. In isolation, they might look somewhat more reasonable, but the truth is that each year’s increase is compounded, which makes for a whole different story.

Based on figures given to me by the system’s new financial manager on July 15, I calculated what the increases in the assessments over a period of time from FY2010-FY16 (new projection) look like … and the increase is stunning! Due to the compounding from year to year, the real percentages of increase from base year 2010 to the current proposal are as follows: Abbot, 51.10 percent; Cambridge, 41.32 percent; Guilford, 30.73 percent; Parkman, 61.04 percent; Sangerville, 35.34 percent; and Wellington, 44.93 percent increase.

If you are wondering why your taxes have increased so much, there is a strong reason. And … the school committee and administration of SAD 4 don’t “get it”. They think that the area citizens are willing to continue to pay more taxes and they made no effort to even review the sub-lines of the budget to see what they might do. They have not made good on any attempt at all to comprehend what the taxpayers are finally saying, and their problem is with the budgeting process that they use.

The finance sub-committee doesn’t know the budget because it doesn’t in fact build it. The whole school committee doesn’t know its budget because no full-committee time is spent on it. Their mentality is that it is up to the sub-committee, so what you have is a few individuals taking the administration’s figures unsubstantiated. The process is not transparent and they don’t even ask for the background numbers. It is simply an unacceptable effort.

So, if this kind of thinking and process bothers you, as it does me, go to the district budget meeting cited above and vote “no” before you get to another referendum which costs you more money. Force the school committee that is the responsible agent to shape up and do its work.

There is plenty of flexibility in the current proposal to make significant cuts without penalizing the students. This time around, nobody even looked.

Every person’s vote, no matter what his town of residence in the district, counts just as much as every other. Attend, be heard, and vote.

Ann B. Bridge

Parkman