BATH — The Regional School Unit 1 board of directors will seek the opinion of an independent attorney about whether administrators have correctly interpreted legislation regarding cost sharing of local funds in the five-town district.
Superintendent Patrick Manuel said Wednesday that he hopes to select an attorney by week’s end and to be able to share that opinion with the board and the public at the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting on April 23.
The board voted unanimously to seek the opinion during a special meeting on Monday with officials from each of the district’s five communities: Arrowsic, Bath, Phippsburg, West Bath and Woolwich.
The meeting followed discussions last week between state, municipal and district officials about various aspects of cost sharing in RSU 1.
The district was created in 2008 through special legislation known as LD 910, prior to other school consolidation agreements in the state.
RSU 1 board chairman Tim Harkins said that soon after the creation of the district, the board sought a legal opinion on “vague” language in LD 910 in order to determine how to apply a “one-third” formula that calculates costsharing based on one-third property valuation, one-third pupil population and onethird overall population.
Harkins, who was not on the board at the time, said minutes show that when two differing opinions emerged, the board voted in public to accept the interpretation of the law that suggested the district apply the one-third formula to the local additional appropriation, and has done so ever since.
In 2013, the district must raise $17.3 million in revenue, and 88 percent of that — $15.27 million — will be raised according to the state formula used by all districts, RSU 1 business manager Ruth Moore said last week.
The $2.1 million local additional appropriation will be raised through the unique RSU 1 “one-third” formula, according to Moore.
In late March of this year, the RSU 1 board presented the proposed 2013 budget, which included an anticipated increase of nearly 10 percent in Woolwich’s share, with the other four communities in the district expected to experience far lower increases — or in Phippsburg’s case, a slight decrease.
Woolwich selectmen met with officials from Maine Department of Education and Maine Revenue Services, hoping — in vain — that the town’s state valuation had been incorrectly calculated.
Then last week, David King, chairman of the Woolwich Board of Selectmen, said he wasn’t satisfied that RSU 1 officials had correctly interpreted LD 910, and didn’t think the board had the legal authority to make that decision.
On Monday, the RSU 1 board of directors met at Fisher-Mitchell School in Bath with representatives of the five district communities for what Manuel said Wednesday was a “very honest” and “ candid” discussion about whether the district should have calculated all local costsharing or just the additional local appropriation on the “one-third” formula.
“A lot of people were surprised we weren’t (already using) the ‘one-third, one-third, one-third’ (formula) for all of the local share,” Manuel said. “ There were some people who felt like they were maybe misled and some requests for the board to reconsider or revisit” the cost-sharing decision.
The board then voted unanimously to seek an independent opinion on the interpretation, and to share that opinion with the public by the board’s next meeting on April 23.
Another opinion is warranted, Manuel said, because, although the initial opinions were discussed and voted on in public session, “I think the board is at a point where they’re looking at this from all angles and trying to keep an open mind. They thought it best to get one not affiliated with RSU 1 at all.”
Should the attorney return with an opinion that RSU 1 has incorrectly interpreted the language, “There could be some things the board thinks should be applied to make right. It could be something as soon as the 2013 budget,” Manuel said.
bbrogan@timesrecord.com
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