Default budget still spurs dissent in Newfound district

School districts in the Lakes Region are already preparing for the upcoming budget season, with building principals gathering staff recommendations for  superintendents to review.

For big-ticket items, there will be discussions about which items identified in capital improvement programs will make it onto the school district warrants and which may have to be deferred due to changes in circumstances.

Inter-Lakes, for instance, will be looking at setting aside money toward the future replacement of artificial turf on its athletic field, while Gilford is planning renovations to high school locker rooms.

The Newfound Area School District has scheduled a public hearing on its capital improvement program for Monday night, one that may be controversial because of last year’s decision to include – in the default budget – items that voters had rejected in the proposed budget.

Two years ago, the district added $800,000 to the budget to replace the high school roof. The Newfound Area School Board subsequently adopted a capital improvement program that included that roof replacement. Business Manager Michael Limanni used that decision to say that items in the capital improvement plan are now considered part of the default budget, and he included $712,400 worth of capital projects in both the proposed and the default budgets at last year’s school district meeting.

It was not until after the deliberative session that Bristol resident Archie Auger — the same man who had proposed adding the $800,000 for the roof project to the previous year’s budget — noticed what the administration had done. He asked the School Board to reconsider the inclusion of those funds in the default budget, saying the roof repair was a one-time expense and, therefore, should not be included in the default budget.

The School Board refused to discuss the matter before the vote and, when residents voted down the proposed budget, it allowed the default budget to become effective.

The School Board attorney, Barbara Loughman, said including money for facilities improvements in the default budget is legal. Attorneys for member towns have disputed that assertion, and some residents have threatened to sue the school district if it did not reverse course.

Earlier this month, the School Board was able to return more than $1 million to taxpayers after realizing an unexpended year-end fund balance of $1.5 million, which more than made up for the disputed $712,400 — a move that might discourage a lawsuit and allow the district to continue placing capital improvement costs in the default budget going forward.

Monday’s meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the media center of Newfound Regional High School may answer that question.

Other residents are vowing to support the School Board and the capital improvement program, saying that the money is there to take care of long-neglected spending items.

Traditional approach

School Administrative Unit 2 Assistant Superintendent Trish Temperino said Inter-Lakes and Ashland school districts take the approach of viewing their 10-year capital improvement program as a fluid document.

“Sometimes things happen and priorities shift,” she said. They view the capital improvement program and their facilities improvement plan as a way to facilitate the budget discussion and attempt to smooth out the tax impact from year to year.

The districts are likely to place capital projects in separate warrant articles for the voters to decide.

“It’s not so about the dollar amount as whether it’s significant enough for a separate warrant article,” Temperino said.

Inter-Lakes retains a traditional school district meeting format, so residents have a chance to set the budget. Ashland, on the other hand, like Newfound, is an Official Ballot — or SB2 — district where residents can amend the budget at the deliberative session, but give it only an up-or-down vote at the ballot session. That can lead to the adoption of the default budget.

“If it’s a new item — such as a roof — it would not go into the default budget,” Temperino said.

She said both districts try to anticipate expenses and set aside money in expendable trust funds so there is not big hit on taxpayers.

“At Inter-Lakes, we plan maintenance and improvements 10-12 years out, and we communicate to the School Board, talking about how to offset the higher expense item through expendable trust items,” she said.

During the district meeting, there is a motion to place up to $100,000 from the year-end unexpended fund balance into the expendable trusts, which can be for facilities or special education expenses.

Kirk Beitler, superintendent of SAU 73, said the Gilford School District takes a similar approach.

“We did a roof this year, and it was in our budget as a capital improvement project. We had it on the plan for years, and have others in the future; we’re planning those things out, telling the voters, the budget committee members, and the town,” he said. “We’re being transparent with what our plans are.”

He noted that the roof warrant ran out as of June 30 this year, so they needed to do that replacement.

Gilford has started setting aside money for the locker room renovations, slated for 2022-23, since that was the only part of the building that was not included in the renovations of 2003-04.

Beitler said Gilford will begin its budget work next week, meeting with the building principals, but he expects the district will continue supporting some of the programs already initiated.

“We’ve started some virtual reality stuff, so we will explore that, and we have a robust robotics program, so we will want to continue with those,” Beitler said, adding that mathematics, writing, and reading are other priorities.

Beitler noted that, last year, the School Board’s proposed spending was 1 percent less than the previous year’s budget.

Different for Newfound

Responding to some of the complaints about the way Newfound is handling the capital projects, Limanni said Newfound's approach is different for a variety of reasons.

"The main difference in what our school board is doing versus some of these other districts is that we are not burying these items in our repair and maintenance lines," he said. "We spent over a year reviewing our facilities' needs through transparent, public meetings, and created a very specific plan to get back on track."

He continued, "That plan was generated publicly by a subcommittee of the school board — the legislative body, elected by the people, i.e., the people's voice. The facilities committee had members from the school board, budget committee, district staff, and the general public.

"Also different from other districts was that our plan was not level-funded; it recognized that our immediate concerns were large, but if we used good fiscal planning, we could stabilize the investment into our aging infrastructure by getting down to our annual depreciation expense (around $450K) while using the expendable trust to manage the ups and downs of project costs. This is smart and fiscally responsible."

To contact Tom Caldwell, email tom@laconiadailysun.com.