SCARBOROUGH
Slimmer school budget wins approval by narrow margin
Scarborough voters approved a revamped 2014-15 school budget on Tuesday by a 185-vote margin, after rejecting an earlier version on May 13.
The vote was 1,598 to 1,413, according to Town Clerk Tody Justice.
The Town Council trimmed $324,000 from the $42.5 million proposed budget that voters rejected, according to budget documents. The approved $42.3 million budget is about $1.5 million less than initially requested by Superintendent George Entwistle.
The first referendum failed by a vote of 1,169 to 1,013, with 14.2 percent of the town’s 15,318 voters turning out at the polls.
In a nonbinding advisory ballot question, 1,257 voters said the initial budget proposal was too high, 370 said it was too low and 516 said it was acceptable.
If the second referendum had failed, the town was required to hold another budget meeting within 10 days to approve an alternative budget proposal and schedule a third validation referendum.
This story was updated at 2:57 p.m. on June 11 to correct the amount trimmed by the Town Council.
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