Orland town meeting to decide $3M school budget

ORLAND – Residents will face little out of the ordinary next week when they gather for the annual town meeting.

“It’s a pretty straightforward budget,” said Selectman Wayne Ames.

Residents will begin discussion of the warrant articles at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at the Orland Consolidated School gymnasium.

Municipal elections will be held Monday, March 26, with the polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the town hall. There is only one contested race this year. Longtime Selectman Ames is seeking re-election for another three-year term. He is challenged by William Perkins.

The only real budget issue, according to Ames, is the school budget.

“We’re not about to obtain the numbers for the school budget as to how much [state] subsidy we’re going to get,” Ames said Wednesday. “We’ve faced this situation before, and there’s always been the assumption that, if we needed to go back and raise more money, we would go to a special town meeting.”

The $3 million budget represents less than a 1 percent increase from the current school budget. But because of declining state revenues, based on increased property values and a smaller student population, the amount to be raised locally is expected to increase by 7.12 percent or $127,349.

To keep the budget increases at a minimum, the school committee has reduced staff at the elementary school, eliminating two full-time teaching positions and other positions and reducing funds for other academic, athletic and co-curricular programs.

“In my mind, they’ve done a great job in paring down the budget in the face of loss of revenue and the loss of student population,” Ames said. “They’ve made some pretty hard decisions.”

Even with the cuts, the local appropriation exceeds the limit set by the formula established in LD 1, and voters will have to vote on a separate article authorizing the school committee to exceed that limit.

The municipal budget totals $1,037,230, an increase of about 2 percent. The selectmen also pared down the budget and cut about $12,000 of requests from outside agencies out of the initial budget, according to Ames.

One item that voters will decide is whether to provide funding to the Great Pond Mountain Trust. The trust has requested $5,000 and the selectmen have recommended that the article ought not to pass.

Although the selectmen support the trust and its mission, Ames said they agreed that the group already receives tax deductions worth well over $5,000. Most of the trust’s lands have been placed in tree growth which reduces their tax value, he said. Although the town receives reimbursement for some of that lost revenue, it is not a 100 percent reimbursement.

“Because of a lack of ability to tax them on some of their properties, we think they’re already receiving well over $5,000 in tax deductions,” he said.