BLUE HILL – The Union 93 school committee has approved a $332,799 budget for the central office for the 2004-05 year.

The budget includes salary increases for the superintendent of schools, the director of special education and the office staff that serve elementary schools in Blue Hill, Brooksville, Castine and Penobscot. The budget represents a 1.5 percent increase over the current central office budget.

Much of the increase came in salaries.

Audrey Bradford, joint board chairman, said salaries increased about 3 percent from the current year.

The board approved a 6.6 percent raise for Superintendent Mark Hurvitt, bringing his salary to $80,000.

Hurvitt was hired last summer to replace Dwaine Craig. At that time, Bradford said, the union schools were under budget constraints and could not offer Hurvitt the amount they wanted.

“This brings us up to where we thought we would be,” she said.

The other major increase was for health insurance for the office staff. Coverage jumped by almost $4,000 – from $20,908 this year to $24,600 for the coming year.

The budget does not include money to implement an efficiency plan under development between Union 93 and Union 76 (Deer Isle, Stonington, Brooklin and Sedgwick).

The efficiency committee, which includes representatives from the two unions, has identified three areas to investigate for possible saving. Those involve creating two jobs – technology coordinator and efficiency manager – and reviewing the lunch programs in the eight district schools. Planning will continue in the new year, Hurvitt said, and the committee could have some recommendation next fall that could require an “initial big bite, budget-wise,” Hurvitt said.

“The committee will come back with a major proposal that will be costed out,” he said. “They’re not recommending any expenditure at this point.”

The board also approved a cost-sharing plan for the four union towns.

The plan calls for the smaller towns in the union – Penobscot, Castine and Brooksville – to pay 23.3 percent of the budget each, with Blue Hill paying the remaining 30.1 percent.

Those amounts will be built into the individual school budgets and presented to voters at the annual town meetings in the spring.