Minot may be missing some figures when it goes to town meeting

MINOT — The annual town meeting in Minot is — generally speaking — not a two hour sprint though the warrant articles employed by some area towns.  In Minot, town meeting tends to be a daylong affair.  And this year, thanks to delays on the state level, voters may be forced to conduct their school funding votes on an entirely different day.

Because Minot belongs to a School Union, and not a School Administrative District, it raises and appropriates money for local schools independently of any other town.  Minot Consolidated School houses grades K-8, while higher grades are tuitioned to the Poland Regional High School.

“Our budget is our own,” said Dean Campbell, chairman of Minot’s board of selectmen. “Poland, Mechanic Falls and Minot are only connected by [the] superintendent’s office.”

In addressing any possible perception of budgetary dawdling, School Union 29 Superintendent Nina Schlikin, addressed a letter on the subject — dated December 23 — to the Minot Board of Selectmen.

School systems across Maine, Schlikin said, were waiting to receive state allocation information so that they could begin piecing together their budgets for 2005-2006.

“Although we never have actual figures from the state until late spring,” Schlikin wrote, “we have been able to anticipate an approximate revenue because we had a pattern of funding that was familiar and somewhat predictable.

Schlikin went on to detail some of the obstacles that might prevent the school union from providing voters with solid numbers to vote on in time for Minot’s annual town meeting in March.

“. . . We have a new funding formula which is based on state averages, not expenditures, as in the past; there are dedicated targeted and weighted areas; there are new funding formulas for special education, transportation, and vocational education,” she wrote.

Schlikin also cited uncertainty over whether the state legislature will approve Education Commissioner Susan Gendron’s proposal to fund “essential programs and services” at 84 percent in the 2006 fiscal year.  This figure, Schlikin said, is a portion of the 55 percent of all educational funding that voters had requested of the state in a June, 2004 referendum vote.

In addition, Schlikin voiced concern over a bill currently winding its way through the State House: LD.1, “An Act to Increase State Share of Educational Costs, Reduce Property Taxes and Reduce Government Spending At All Levels.” 

“We also do not know what additional action the legislature may make,” wrote Schlikin of the bill, which is “scheduled for passage” on January 20, provided that it receives a two-thirds vote.

Maine state officials predict the state budget shortfall for 2005 to be $127 million or more.

Campbell stated that municipal officers had recently held a workshop with school officials regarding the lack of fiscal information.

“We are probably going to go to town meeting without any hard numbers for the school,” said Campbell.  “The town report actually won’t have any school figures in it.”

Campbell listed two available options.  Both would include approving and printing the appropriate articles regarding the school as part of the town meeting warrant, but leaving blanks in place of any actual numbers.

Minot’s annual town report goes to press on January 30.  The report will not be mailed to all households this year.  Instead, local residents will be able to pick-up a copy of the report at the town office.

If school funding figures are made available before the town meeting, an addendum would be published to be presented to voters at that time.  If, on the other hand, selectmen are still not able to fill in the blanks, the meeting would then be recessed until such time as sufficient information is provided by school administrators.

According to Campbell, recessing the town meeting will be the preferred method of handling the situation, as that would preclude changes, other than the addition of hard numbers, to the articles.

“If we hold a [later] special town meeting, we could have new items crop up that weren’t on the original warrant,” said Campbell.

Selectman Eda Tripp stated that voters might get a chance to vote on school issues without recessing.  However, she said, the numbers would need to be made available far enough in advance of the town meeting for public hearings to be scheduled.

“I don’t think that the state is going to get it together in time,” said Campbell.  “Knowing the state of Maine, they’re bound to fight about this [educational funding] for at least a month, because there are a lot of political issues. 

“The representation on these [legislative] committees is always a lot higher from the big cities than the towns.  So you’re always a little scared that the scale is going to tilt towards the cities.

“Again, this is typical of the state of Maine,” said Campbell.  “They have no consideration for small towns, when it comes to town meeting [and] knowing where we’re going [fiscally] and how we’re getting there.”