The Westbrook School Department’s budget received a boost in revenue at Monday’s Westbrook City Council meeting, leading to a drop in the amount needed to be raised by local taxes.
A $200,000 increase in miscellaneous revenues was added to the budget in order to reflect money that will be taken from the May 2008 bonding of Westbrook’s newly planned middle school. Over the past two years, $300,000 had been spent on various engineering, architectural and site-plan costs associated with the proposed school. The bond will cover those previously incurred costs.
Prior to the middle school referendum, the school committee had added $100,000 in revenues to the budget because it expected the referendum would pass, and a portion of the bond money could be applied to the budget. The committee did not apply the entire $300,000 in revenue, in part to avoid a giant hole in revenues if the bond did not pass, and in part to avoid having a revenue that would disappear in future budgets. The committee was expecting to recoup $100,000 a year over three years.
The council, at Monday’s reading of the budget, added the $200,000 to miscellaneous revenues to reflect the change and recoup the costs from the past two years all at once.
The move reduces the amount of money the city needs to raise for the school department by $200,000, while the school budget stays at $29 million. Because the council made changes to the budget at what was scheduled for a second and final reading, the document has to go back before the council for a second reading in another special meeting, Monday at 7 p.m. in room 114 of the Westbrook high school.
Councilor Ed Symbol also moved to add back in $50,000 in expenditures he had moved to cut – and the council approved – at the June 11 council meeting. Symbol said he discussed where budget cuts could come from with the school committee’s chairwoman, Colleen Hilton, after he proposed the cut and he saw a fairly tight budget.
Superintendent of Schools Stan Sawyer was glad to see the $50,000 back in. Sawyer said some of the places they were looking to make cuts in order to reflect the vote of the council would have negatively impacted student programs.
Still included in the budget is a controversial $250,000 recycling program funded by taxes. Councilor Mike Foley continued to vote against the budget because of the inclusion of this program, saying it’s too tight a year to fund a recycling program with taxes.
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