Wiscasset Voters Reject School Budget For Second Time

June 18, 2008 - TimesRecord.Com

WISCASSET — For the second time, Wiscasset voters failed to pass a school budget in a secret ballot after passing it at a town meeting. The phenomenon has the chairman of the School Committee bewildered.

"I don't know what's going on," said Eugene Stover this morning, following Tuesday's paper ballot vote that resulted in a 242-322 defeat of the $9.6 million school budget. "I don't know where they want us to cut."

At the last town meeting June 7, about 85 people passed the budget without any cuts.

"We had one person move to cut $1 million," he said. "That was voted down. Then someone got up and moved to cut $500,000 and that was turned down. So we thought the budget was okay. But like the first time, when it came to a paper ballot vote, the budget failed."

Voters rejected a first budget by paper ballot on May 27, after approving it at a May 17 town meeting.

Stover attributes the budget's failure to apathy.

"We had 85 people show up at the town meeting to discuss the budget," he said. "There's too much apathy in this town and there are a lot of people who think more of money than they do of education. The people who don't show up at the town meeting end up listening to their neighbors and voting down the budget without really being informed."

The $9.6 million 2008-09 budget, of which $4.4 million is the local appropriation, represents an increase over this year's budget of less than 4 percent and is affected by a $200,000 decrease in state aid.

Stover said the committee will go back and try again.

"I'm not sure we can avoid cutting programs if the townspeople insist," he said. "Eighty-seven percent of the budget is committed, that doesn't leave much room. When you cut programs you're talking about cutting teachers."

Stover warned that cutting programs may affect the number of tuition students in the system.

"What people may not realize is that if we cut too many programs then our tuition students may seek other schools," he said. "That would mean a loss of tuition revenue."

David Connerty-Marin, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said he knows of no school district that has voted down a budget more than once.

"But school districts are not required to report when budgets fail to get approval, so there may be more schools that have voted that way," he said.

Connerty-Marin said if the voters fail to pass a budget by July 1, then the last budget passed by the school committee takes effect as an interim budget.

"If they're still without an approved 2008-09 budget as of July 18, however, a new law goes into effect that says if voters reject a budget the school district reverts back to the last budget voted on at a public meeting," he said. "Remember, that would be temporary until a budget is finally approved."

Stover said the committee would schedule yet another public meeting "soon."