Mayor Bruce Chuluda has asked the Westbrook School Department to limit spending growth to 4 percent over last year’s budget. However, a preliminary budget released by the School Department is over $400,000 higher than the limit requested by the mayor.
Last year, the school system received about $2 million more from the state than it had the previous year. This year, city and school officials expect to get more money than last year, but they don’t know how much more.
“Part of the rationale (of Chuluda giving an expenditure guideline as opposed to a net tax rate increase guideline) was to try to separate the decision of how much should the budget grow as opposed to how much of those new dollars are applied to tax rate reduction,” said Bryant at a joint Westbrook City Council/School Committee workshop Monday night.
Two years ago a state referendum required that the state fund 55 percent of local school systems’ budgets. In response, the state Legislature voted to increase state money going to local school systems to 55 percent of their budgets over the course of about 5 years. Westbrook Superintendent of Schools Stan Sawyer said this was an effort for the state to pay for the cost of local school systems and relieve some of the burden from local taxpayers.
“Last year we had a lot of discussion at the council level certainly as to how much of the new dollars were going to go back to the taxpayer,” Bryant said. “And one could argue that every dollar went to the taxpayer and helped offset an increase that they otherwise would have had to bear with the local property tax.”
On Monday night, Sawyer presented a preliminary budget estimate to the council. The estimate included increased fixed costs as well as a number of requests for additional money for such things as new teachers, new materials, and maintenance.
The estimate presented was about $440,000 over Chuluda’s requested budget. However, Sawyer said in a later interview that the process is in a very early stage and the numbers he proposed on Monday would not be the final numbers.
“I won’t be supporting (all of the extra expenses) in the budget today when I send it to the finance committee,” said Sawyer. “I included those things so that the finance committee would know what needs the school systems has. We have a long way to go.”
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