Bangor school officials complete budget plan

BANGOR – After waiting several weeks longer than usual for the state to release its subsidy figures for the coming academic year, local school department officials have put the final touches on an operating budget for the city’s public schools.

The proposed $39.7 million school budget now is headed for the City Council’s finance committee, which is slated to take it up early next week, Superintendent Robert Ervin said Tuesday.

After final adjustments last week, the Bangor School Department’s proposed gross operating budget for 2007-08 stood at $39,695,116, up 4.29 percent from this year’s $38,060,918.

The latest subsidy figures issued from Augusta suggest that the school department will receive $16,684,132 in state aid for education, or 7.24 percent more than this year.

Local taxpayers’ share, however, also would be higher at $20,186,959, or 2.84 percent more than this year.

The balance of the budget would be funded with $700,000 carried forward from this year’s budget and other revenues, including tuition for educating nonresident students.

As Ervin and school committee Chairman Martha Newman see it, the school department has hammered out a budget plan that more or less maintains the status quo in terms of staffing and programming.

“We are cutting no programs,” Ervin said. “But on the other hand, this is not a budget that champions new programs.”

“Even though there are definitely some that we want or need,” Newman added.

Ervin said efforts to soften the impact on Bangor taxpayers has played a large role in developing next year’s budget.

“I think this is an honest effort to [curb spending] but at the same time I think the people of Bangor have always had high expectations for their schools,” Ervin said.

“We’re trying to keep the increases reasonable. We’re under 4.5 percent. Obviously I’d like that to be lower but the reality is there are contractual obligations [and other fixed costs] we have to meet,” he said.

During a budget workshop last month, Ervin attributed the operating budget increase to a variety of factors, including salary and health insurance increases, rising costs for food service and student transportation, and the need to adjust staffing levels to keep pace with enrollment.

Newman said it was important to note that despite a 4.29 percent hike in the gross budget, the amount that must be raised locally would only increase 2.84 percent, barring any changes in state subsidy.

Because of the uncertainty over their final budget, state education officials last month released two sets of preliminary subsidy estimates to allow local school officials to move forward in their budget development process.

When building his budget, Ervin went with the worst-case scenario.

“That’s ultimately what the governor went with,” Ervin said, though he cautioned that the money picture still could change next month, as state lawmakers enter the final throes of their budget process.

Still, Ervin said Tuesday that he is fairly confident his proposed budget won’t undergo any drastic changes.

“I think that this has an 80 percent chance of staying the same,” he said.