Voters approve $7.3M budget

BAILEYVILLE – Voters were in the mood to spend some money and that’s what they did Monday night at the annual town meeting when they passed a $7.3 million town and school budget.

Voters approved a municipal budget of $2.8 million, about 4 percent more than last year’s budget and a school budget of $4.6 million, a 1.25 percent increase.

The local share of the school budget – that portion paid by the property taxpayers – was approved at $2.7 million, an increase of $162,000 over last year. Union 107 Superintendent Barry McLaughlin explained Tuesday that the school committee had less fund balance to carry over from last year.

Putting together a school budget this year was not easy because the state has not yet said what the school subsidies will be. “We did not even have a rough estimate,” McLaughlin said. “So I used a number, I hope, was conservative.”

The increases were due to fuel and health insurance.

It costs more to keep school buses running now that the price of gas is hovering around $3 per gallon, and once again health insurance has been a sticking point. “We’re spending around $800,000 in health insurance a year,” McLaughlin said. “And it has been averaging 12 [percent] to 13 percent [increase] for the last seven or eight years. You take 12 percent of $800,000, that’s another $100,000 for health insurance. So health insurance is a big, big issue and there’s no end in sight.”

There is a need to replace the roof on the high school gymnasium, but McLaughlin said the Union 107 school committee is hopeful that a November bond issue will include money in the Revolving Renovation Fund. “To help schools finance fairly major constructions or repairs,” he said.

Town Manager Scott Harriman said there were no major line item increases in this year’s municipal budget. “We approved a police cruiser, but that was out of reserve,” Harriman said Tuesday. The voters approved a $50,000 increase in the paving account. “The councilors felt we weren’t putting enough money into the roads,” he said.

Now that the dust has settled, Harriman projected that on a $50,000 home, the increase to homeowners would be $750 to $760, about a $10 increase over last year.