FORT KENT – Voters in SAD 27 on Monday approved the district’s budget of $9,586,500 for 2003-2004.

“It was pretty much unanimous,” Jim Grandmaison, the district’s business manager, said Wednesday. “There were only two or four dissenting.”

Following the election of the moderator, approval of monetary articles on the warrant took just eight minutes, he said. About 90 people attended the district meeting to vote.

The budget is $421,081 more than this year’s budget, an increase of 4.6 percent.

Most of the increase is for the local share of special education, including the addition of two social workers and an assistant to the special education director.

The school district needs to increase some aspects of the program under an agreement with the state for a special education grant the district received last year, Grandmaison said last week.

Because of declining enrollment, funding for a teaching position at the Eagle Lake Elementary School and two half-time teaching positions at the St. Francis Elementary School and the Fort Kent Elementary School were eliminated from the budget.

Money was added for a three-quarter-time English teaching position at Community High School in Fort Kent.

At Monday’s district meeting, budget articles approved included foundation allocation, $7,315,604, district share, $2,320,561; debt service, $23,601, district share, $8,518; additional local funds, $704,528; and adult education, $174,135, local share, $84,000.

With the approval of the budget, assessments to district towns will be:

. Eagle Lake, $539,969.53, an increase of $45,433.58;

. Fort Kent, $1,585,614.92, up $120,078.86;

. New Canada, $154,009.79, up $14,311.99;

. St. Francis, $216,985.45, up $28,235.65;

. St. John Plantation, $138,421.75, up $731.93;

. Wallagrass, $287,131.60, up $19,210.16;

. Winterville Plantation, $195,473.96, up $21,066.85.