WINTHROP — An auditor hired by the town has recommended a few steps that can be taken by town and school officials to resolve a funding error that left the school district with approximately $700,000 less than it thought it had.

Town and school officials have traded blame for the error in recent weeks, but during a Town Council meeting that ran for more than two hours Monday night, auditor Bruce Nadeau of RHR Smith & Co. declined to pin the mistake on either side.

Rather, Nadeau advised the Town Council that the town may have to raise an additional $831,078 in future years to make up for the shortfall.

Nadeau suggested town officials develop a long-term plan for paying the funds back — a process he warned could take several years — and also create a simpler process for approving future budgets. Nadeau also recommended school and town officials create a joint committee to formulate a long-term plan for addressing the shortfall.

Officials first discovered the roughly $700,000 funding error in late summer, when they were preparing the town’s tax bills.

They made the error when calculating the 2015-2016 school budget and accidentally counted twice a roughly $700,000 revenue item, which came from the state and was meant to repay the district’s debt. The extra $700,000 was then carried over into the $11.2 million budget that voters approved in June this year, leaving the school district with less funding than it thought it had.

When the shortfall was discovered, school officials initially declined to blame anyone for the mistake and identified several measures to make up for it, including a budget freeze, the refinancing of a storage shed, the delay of technology purchases and the spending of $182,000 in surplus funds. They have pledged not to raise taxes to address the shortfall.

But in recent weeks, town and school officials have begun placing blame on the other side for the funding error.

In November, an attorney for the school district sent Town Manager Peter Nielsen a letter saying it was a town employee who “double booked” the projected state revenue — and also that the double-booked amount was $717,000.

At a meeting last month, Superintendent of Schools Gary Rosenthal accused the town of breaking the law by not providing several payments to the school district over the last five years. He asked the town to change the way it raises taxes and to pay the schools $534,140 to correct the errors, which he says the district discovered only recently.

The claimed errors include the town’s failure to make $397,479 in debt service payments to the district in the last two years and to pay the school district $136,661 for an alternative education program known as the Carleton Project in 2012 and 2013. The program was based in Houlton, but had several locations around the state, including one in Winthrop for a couple of years, Rosenthal said.

“In light of the school department having already agreed to shoulder similar errors totaling an additional $717,000, we believe it is appropriate for the town to do its part by assuming responsibility for these mistakes,” Rosenthal said at the meeting, reading from prepared remarks.

But Nielsen and several town councilors have challenged those claims and questioned why school officials waited until November to raise the issues.

Charles Eichacker — 621-5642

ceichacker@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @ceichacker