|
|
JAY – Selectmen declined to unilaterally allow the school department to draw upon funds set aside for the consolidation penalty Monday evening, instead saying residents should vote on the issue at a special town meeting.
Superintendent Robert Wall presented selectmen with the school department’s financial issues at the meeting. Due to the governor’s curtailments, the Department of Education had ordered both a state subsidy reduction and increased the amount of local funding required to leverage that subsidy. Jay School Department therefore faces a $484,389 shortfall in the current fiscal year, which ends on July 1, 2010.
Voters set the department’s budget at $9.75 million in 2009.
The town is currently holding $216,000 in funds earmarked in 2009 to cover the anticipated consolidation penalty. After voters rejected a merger of the local department with SAD 36 in January 2009, the town expected to face the $216,000 subsidy penalty in the fiscal year of 2009-2010. Selectmen approved releasing $216,000 from an undesignated revenue fund to the school department in March 2009, in an effort to lessen the impact of the subsidy losses.
However, the Legislature passed a law delaying consolidation penalties for one year. Now, the school board and Wall want to use that money to offset these new reductions.
“We’re trying to make it through the year with the program relatively intact,” Wall told selectmen. He told them that he believed the department could absorb a $268,398 subsidy reduction, utilizing the $216,000 to offset the losses, without sacrificing positions.
“Without the $216,000,” Wall said, “we’re probably going to have to look at personnel.”
Selectmen were unreceptive to the idea of voting to send the $216,000 to the department, saying voters had approved a budget that envisioned the funds being used specifically to offset the consolidation penalty.
“My big problem was that this was used to pay the penalty,” Selectman Tom Goding said. “That’s where my problem falls.”
“I feel the voters voted to pay that penalty,” Selectman Chair Stephen McCourt agreed, “and I want to leave it up to the voters to decide how it should be paid out.”
Selectmen and Town Manager Ruth Cushman instead discussed holding a special town meeting some time in February for voters to consider the issue. Town meetings require advance posting of seven days, and Cushman said she would determine when a meeting could be held.
Wall noted that the school department faces difficult decisions in the years ahead. In the next fiscal year, the town stands to lose $862,000 in state subsidy, as well as exhausting stabilization funding used to support the department this year. Budget reductions ranging from $1.2 to $1.4 million are anticipated, which Wall said would be a “significant impact on Jay.”
