This is the time for legislators to get out their calculators and start totaling up the spending in Augusta. In addition to properly funding research and development through the university system, there are a few are particularly important proposals in the budget that should be supported next week by the full Legislature.

Keep in mind that the budget surplus is the excess revenues from last year and the projected extra from this and next year. The total comes to approximately $306 million, divided between on-going ($93 million) and one-time ($213 million) revenues. Here’s a list — by no means all-inclusive — of worthy proposals for using the money.

The homestead exemption of $7,500 is tax relief where it’s needed most. Property taxpayers have carried a disproportionate burden of education costs this decade and deserve a break. This is a fair and effective means to pay them back. Lawmakers can choose the mechanism that returns the money as long as taxpayers end up with a written statement that shows how much of a break they received compared with what they are paying now. Ongoing cost: $52 million.

Raise the personal exemption on state income tax to conform with the federal level. It was the intention of lawmakers to have the state level track the feds when they tinkered with it in the 1980s. They could be accused of insufficient tinkering because the process they installed didn’t work and the state has been too broke this decade to do much about it. They can now. Ongoing cost: $28.6 million.

If using a sizable chunk of one-time money for one-time fixes of things truly broken is wise — and it is — there can be no better candidate than Maine’s juvenile corrections system, a deplorable, woefully understaffed operation that does little more than warehouse troubled kids and releases them as more accomplished criminals. Gov. King proposes combining $10 million in interest and federal grants with surplus revenues to clean up once and for all one of Maine’s biggest messes. It’s a good investment that could pay handsome dividends. One-time cost: $38 million.

Increasing the General Purpose Aid to Education should have been high on everyone’s list and should have been part of base funding. That’s not going to happen this session, but education advocates should offer a final admendment to at least give back to schools a small portion of the money they were denied for the past nine years. Widespread support exists for adding 3 percent, one-time, to a 3 percent increase already scheduled. Advocates have nothing to lose by demanding a more substantial bump. A brave legislator needs to stand up and ask for at least an additional 5 percent. One-time cost: $27.5 million.