OAKLAND — Town Manager Gary Bowman was shocked when the assessor broke the news this week that the town would owe about $170,000 more than it had planned for its share of the Regional School Unit 18 budget.

The school district’s budget team, as it turned out, mistakenly had transposed figures for required additional local revenue for Oakland and Sidney in an earlier version of the budget, making it look as if Oakland would pay less and Sidney more.

The mistake was caught after voters rejected a $34.7 million school budget in a ballot referendum in late May, and the figures were corrected in the $34.4 million budget ratified by voters in an election June 30. RSU 18 includes the towns of Oakland, Belgrade, Sidney, Rome and China.

But the mistake was never explained to the Sidney and Oakland town officials, who were using earlier projections to compute next year’s property tax rate.

As a result, the tax rate in Oakland is expected to increase from $14.75 per $1,000 worth of property to $15.40. Before this week, the town estimated that the town’s tax rate would increase to only $15.

Moreover, Town Office staff members were giving voters, and particularly budget opponents, inaccurate budget figures in the run-up to the second vote, according to Bowman. Oakland voters approved the budget in both rounds of voting, backing it 391-286 in the second vote on June 30.

Wednesday afternoon, the Town Council held a special meeting with Superintendent Gary Smith and School Business Manager Bobbi Avery to get an explanation for the mistake.

More than 20 people, including school budget opponents who campaigned to reject the spending plan, crowded into the small council chambers in the bottom floor of the Oakland Town Office.

Town Council Chairman Mike Perkins set the tone for the meeting.

“We are not here to beat up on anybody,” Perkins said. “All this is is a fact-finding mission for us.”

Residents attending the special meeting Wednesday asked whether the mistake meant the budget vote was annulled and whether RSU 18 should find the $170,000 in its own budget instead of having Oakland pay.

Council Chairman Perkins said the council could not annul or challenge the results of the referendum other than through judicial intervention. Proving a case would be a “daunting task” that would cost an “astronomical amount of money,” and the council didn’t intend to start legal action, Perkins said. Residents would need to lobby the school board if they wanted more action on the budget, Perkins added.

Smith, speaking to the council, explained that the error was discovered by Sidney resident and Selectman Tim Russell after voters defeated the proposed school budget in late May at the polls, and it was corrected before the second vote.

The towns usually are listed alphabetically on the spreadsheets he was using to design the budget, but in one section the error occurred when he was developing the school district revenue, Smith said. The Oakland and Sidney lines were switched, so he mistakenly transposed the numbers, he said.

“I didn’t catch it this year. That’s what happened,” Smith said.

But after finding the mistake and correcting it in early June, Smith acknowledged that he never communicated that to town officials and didn’t take into account that they were using the outdated figures to develop tax rate increases.

“The error on my part was to not communicate directly to each town,” Smith said. The administration would take extra measures in the next budget cycle to make sure the mistake wasn’t repeated, he said.

According to Bowman, Oakland originally was told that its share of the RSU 18 budget was roughly $4,880,000, about $229,000 more than last year. In fact, that number was the amount Sidney was expected to pay. Oakland’s actual proposed contribution is more than $5,058,000, almost $170,000 more than projected, Bowman said.

Councilor Don Borman said the largest concern for taxpayers and town officials is how a proposed budget is going to affect the property tax rate. In light of the mix-up this year, a plan needs to be developed to make sure people get the correct facts and figures, he said.

Bowman, too, said it was “a shock” when the new figures came in earlier this week. He said he thought his own reputation was on the line because he had been providing people, including political adversaries of the school budget, with inaccurate tax figures. With due diligence, the mistake could have been caught, he said.

“Something broke in the process this time,” Bowman said.

Peter McGuire — 861-9239

pmcguire@centralmaine.com

Twitter: PeteL_McGuire

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