The Sept. 12 vote on the Regional School Unit 9 district budget is extremely important. A vocal majority of voters at the school budget meeting recently voted for “flat funding” for our school district for the next year. The voters essentially reduced the school budget by $887,984.

The recommended increase included fixed costs over which the school has no control: increased costs for special education services, fuel, staff salaries. If this budget passes at the polls, the district will have to reduce their budget by $887,984, which will by necessity involve cutting staff and programs, including sports and music. This will greatly impact the school experience for our children and their future.

Dividing the requested increase of $887,984 by the total projected town assessments comes to $.069 per dollar assessed. Therefore, the additional cost for a home assessed at $100,000 would be $6.90 over the year. (Of course, each town will vary on that.)

We are very fortunate to have high quality schools for our youth. To degrade the quality of our schools by starving them of adequate funding will ultimately hurt the entire community. A community that makes education of tomorrow’s leaders a top priority attracts new business and residents.

Vote no on the school budget validation referendum to send the budget back to the school board to work out a compromise that can be approved by all voters.

Karyl Condit

Farmington