03/27/2019

School Board reschedules fiscal 2019-20 budget adoption vote to April 4

Due to an anticipated lack of a quorum, the School Board has rescheduled its April business meeting from Tuesday, April 9, 2019 to Thursday, April 4, 6:30 p.m. in the Town Hall chamber.

The board is slated to vote on a proposed $26.89 million school budget for fiscal 2019-20, up 5.9 percent over this year's $25.4 million school budget. The proposal will mean a $14.40 tax rate for schools, up 68 cents, or 4.9 percent, over this year's rate.

The budget proposal is $475,000 less than what was drafted in February and reflects the board's desire to cap the spending increase at 6 percent. During budget deliberations earlier this month, the board agreed to a net decrease of $427,328 in requested expenditures.

At their most recent workshop March 26, board members agreed to decrease spending another $47,673 after learning that health-insurance premiums, budgeted to increase 10 percent, will rise no more than 7 percent. The rest of the anticipated $101,848 savings, $53,811, would remain in the budget's contingency fund. The addition brings the contingency fund to a little over $150,000, an amount board members agreed was comfortable to cover a possible increase in the number of English-language learning students or a larger than anticipated kindergarten class.

Elizabeth Scifres, chair of the board's finance committee, said she this was the first school budget in years that she's felt good about. After three consecutive years of significant reductions in state subsidy, a $407,000 subsidy increase next year will allow some rebuilding of budget lines for supplies, materials and equipment, Scifres said.

"It's my perspective that we can be conservative, we can be responsible to the taxpayers and still move forward," Scifres said.

Included in the proposal is $189,000 for a facilities-needs assessment, an item recommended by an ad hoc committee that met four times this fall to determine the need for the study.

Budget updates are posted on the School Department's budget website.