Next SAD 4 district budget meeting scheduled for Aug. 29

Referendum would be Sept. 8

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

GUILFORD — A day after the second proposed 2016-17 SAD 4 budget was voted down – a $6,877,684 total or more than $255,500 less than the amount of the first budget was defeated at the polls 287-168 across the six district communities – the school board met on July 27 to start the process of preparing a third draft to bring forward to the public.

Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick said she and Finance Director Cindy Pullyard met earlier in the day to set up a schedule for the continuing budget process. “The date you have to have to have the budget at the towns by is Sept. 9,” Kirkpatrick said.

In order to meet this deadline, the budget referendum is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 8 in Abbot, Cambridge, Guilford, Parkman, Sangerville and Wellington. Kirkpatrick said the district budget meeting, when residents vote on the articles making up the spending plan total for the referendum, would be on Monday, Aug. 29, starting at 6 p.m. with an information session at Piscataquis Community Elementary School.

“The board meeting to approve the budget going to the district meeting will be on Thursday, Aug. 18,” the superintendent said. Kirkpatrick said the school board’s budget committee would be meeting earlier that week, Monday, Aug. 15 at 6 p.m. with the full table of directors gathering for the regular August meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 9 at 7 p.m.

“We need information, why did it go up, why did it go down?,” Kirkpatrick said, mentioning the previous two district budget meetings featured a half dozen amendments proposed for the multi-million dollar article concerning regular education. She said the sessions featured three different groups in the audience, those wanting to reduce the budgeted amount for regular education, those wanting to increase the item to preserve some proposed position and program cuts and attendees who favored the the total as written.

Kirkpatrick said district officials would like to meet with the selectboards from the half dozen SAD 4 communities, with these sessions slated for the first few days of August. “We started working on a survey as well to go out,” she said.

Pullyard said she is designing the survey to be multiple choice, to be filled out electronically or mailed back – with the latter option for those wanting to add comments. The survey would be distributed in early August, and is available on the SAD 4 homepage at www.sad4.org.