WALES — School board members in Regional School Unit 4 on Wednesday agreed on an $18 million budget that would shave $51,000 off a proposal rejected by voters last month.

“We were looking for $50,000; we found $51,000,” Superintendent James Hodgkin told board members and the handful of people who gathered for the meeting.

Board members approved the budget, which totals $18,564,945 in spending for the 2015-16 school year, by a 6-2 vote. Board Chairman Robert English, of Wales, and Amedeo Lauria, of Sabattus, voted against the proposal.

The budget now will go to a public hearing on July 22. The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Oak Hill High School in Wales. The meeting will give voters in the three RSU communities of Litchfield, Sabattus and Wales a chance to consider the school board’s proposal and decide whether to keep spending the same or change it.

The budget that emerges from the public hearing will go a referendum vote scheduled for July 28.

“We already know the (20)15-16 budget is going to be pretty strapped,” Hodgkin said.

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Voters last month rejected an $18.6 million-plus budget that increased spending more than $700,000 over the 2014-15 school year. Wales voters approved the proposal, but it failed in both Sabattus and Litchfield.

The rejection started the budget process anew. The first step in that process is for the school board to come up with a new proposal to send to residents at the public hearing.

The school board made cuts in three areas to reach its $50,000 goal: technology, maintenance and system administration.

Hodgkin said Wednesday that the technology decrease of $5,000 was negotiated with various vendors.

The board found $16,000 in maintenance savings by scaling back care of the athletic fields at Carrie Ricker School in Litchfield and Oak Hill Middle School in Wales. The cut was made primarily in herbicides and pesticides that typically are applied to the fields.

The system administration cut would eliminate $30,000 to go toward the lease of a second bus. Hodgkin said funding two buses was unnecessary to maintain the fleet. He said the board could budget comfortably for a bus and a half each year, which would allow the district to buy two new buses every three or four years.

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“People should feel very good about our buses,” Hodgkin said. “Overall they’re in very good shape.”

The proposed budget, if ultimately approved, would decrease the tax burden in all three member communities. Sabattus, which would see the biggest benefit, would see its share of the budget drop $78,000 from about $3.4 million in the 2014-15 school year to around $3.3 million in 2015-16.

Litchfield would see the next biggest decrease. Its taxes would drop $26,000, from about $3.4 million to $3.3 million.

Wales, which would pay about $1.2 million, would see a $23,000 decrease in taxes under the proposal.

Board member Nancy Provost, of Sabattus, said the board had talked about cutting $20,000 from special education, but Hodgkin cited uncertainty about how much money will be needed for the program.

“There’s a lot of stuff flying around that makes me reluctant to cut any further,” he said.

Craig Crosby — 621-5642

ccrosby@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @CraigCrosby4


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