State chops $75,000 off SAD 29 budget

HOULTON – SAD 29 board members will hold a special board meeting on May 12 to decide how to deal with a $75,000 reduction in state subsidy.

SAD 29 consists of the towns of Houlton, Hammond, Littleton and Monticello.

Interim Superintendent Omar Norton said Friday that he was informed late this week of the cut, which he had cautioned school board members might occur at a meeting on Monday evening.

“I told the board that the numbers I gave them might not be the final figures,” Norton said Friday. “I knew that the Legislature had not adjourned yet, so our state subsidy was not certain.”

Gov. John Baldacci recommended a $750 million appropriation for school subsidy, but last week the Legislature affirmed only $740.4 million.

In a February Bangor Daily News article, former Superintendent Susan Johnson said administrators were bracing themselves for a potential loss of $84,000 in state funding, because of declining enrollment and increased property values in the four towns that make up SAD 29.

Norton said that the reduction had nothing to do with enrollment numbers.

“It’s a state thing, it has nothing to do with the local level,” Norton said. “I don’t know of any district out there who got more money, I think we all got less. The Legislature just did not put the money in there.”

Norton, who served four terms in the Legislature, said that he knew to be “cautious.”

“It was a state cut and every system has been affected,” Norton said Friday. “But I have been working with Assistant Superintendent Dawn Dougan and Sue Swimm [payroll clerk and bookkeeper in the superintendent’s office] to see what it will mean for us.”

During a budget workshop last week, Norton distributed an outline of anticipated expenses for the district for Fiscal Year 2005. The proposal projected a state share of $6.5 million combined with other income sources, and a local allocation of $2.2 million.

The budget included funding for a new developmental therapy program that Norton said would benefit special education students.

At a school board meeting on Monday evening, the school board adopted the preliminary budget, but has not signed the warrant for district action. The district is now left to revise the budget to reflect the loss in state subsidy at the coming meeting.

“But these things happen,” Norton said Friday. “We’ll get through it.”