[Update: 9:17 PM] FARMINGTON – A $32.6 million budget for Regional School Unit 9 was rejected for the third time by a wide margin Tuesday evening, as 4,501 voters turned out across all 10 towns.
The final, unofficial result for RSU 9’s towns was 1,608 in favor and 2,893 opposed, with a combined total of 4,501 votes cast. By comparison, roughly 3,100 and 2,700 votes were cast, respectively, in the two referendums earlier this year.
Turnout increased in every town, as compared to the earlier votes, with three towns voting in favor of the $32.6 million budget by a combined 40 votes: Chesterville, New Sharon and New Vineyard. The total, 1,285 margin of “no” votes over “yes” votes exceeded the combined margins of the previous six budget votes held over the past three years.
Specific, town-by-town results can be found below.
The school board will now be tasked with developing a new budget prior to a fourth district-wide budget meeting and budget validation referendum.
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FARMINGTON – Mt. Blue Regional School District is holding its third validation vote for the 2017-18 budget today in all 10 towns. Polls will close for towns at 6, 7 or 8 p.m. tonight.
A “yes” vote will approve the $32.6 million budget set at the Sept. 5 meeting. A “no” vote rejects it, effectively restarting the process. More details about today’s vote, including poll times, and the budget can be found here.
Towns currently reporting unofficial, preliminary results this evening include: Chesterville, Farmington, Industry, New Sharon, New Vineyard, Starks, Temple, Vienna, Weld and Wilton.
Results will be posted, as they come in, here:
Chesterville: 168 yes and 166 no
Farmington: 565 yes and 1,243 no
Industry: 60 yes and 139 no
New Sharon: 227 yes and 210 no
New Vineyard: 99 yes and 78 no
Starks: 24 yes and 156 no
Temple: 58 yes and 123 no
Vienna: 41 yes and 124 no
Weld: 44 yes and 79 no
Wilton: 322 yes and 575 no
Total: 1,608 yes and 2,893 no, or 4,501 total votes cast.
The school board has a Thursday meeting scheduled, regardless as to the outcome of tonight’s vote.
Results for the second validation vote (which failed on July 25)
Chesterville – 55 yes and 172 no
Farmington – 555 yes and 442 no
Industry – 54 yes and 71 no
New Sharon – 95 yes and 204 no
New Vineyard – 25 yes and 90 no
Starks – 111 yes and 23 no
Temple – 50 yes and 69 no
Vienna – 51 yes and 40 no
Weld – 32 yes and 38 no
Wilton – 262 yes and 280 no
Total – 1,290 yes and 1,429 no, or 2,719 total votes cast.
Results for the first validation vote (which failed on June 13)
Chesterville – 61 yes and 183 no
Farmington – 644 yes and 501 no
Industry – 65 yes and 89 no
New Sharon – 139 yes and 207 no
New Vineyard – 31 yes and 109 no
Starks – 84 yes and 19 no
Temple – 65 yes and 75 no
Vienna – 61 yes and 57 no
Weld – 34 yes and 52 no
Wilton – 273 yes and 349 no
Total – 1,457 yes and 1,641 no, or 3,098 total votes cast.
Maybe there should be more home schooling.
@Home school – Home schooling isn’t a realistic option for most. Both parents usually have to work. Also, few parents would have the qualifications or training to be effective educators. This is a public school budget discussion, but thank you for pointing out what many want – to get rid of public education or weaken it so much that it’s pointless. Perhaps we can go back to the good old days when only the rich kids got an education.
Check it the facts: we are a RSU! There are approximately 64 or so of these. RSU 9 is listed at number 51 for amount of money spent per pupil. Most of the schools behind us are smaller schools. We are not a rich community, and we don’t spend like we are. This isn’t about the budget any more. Those against the budget have made this very personal, about individuals. No matter who the Superintendent would be the issues would be the same. You could move to Fayette where they are by themselves and see a cost of around $8900.00 per student. Would that make you happy? Your paying roughly $10450.00 per student shared by 10 Districts. Sounds like a bargain to me. If you were really concerned about education, you’d come to the next meeting willing to work with instead of against. But, I am truly afraid that this won’t happen because the Pied Piper is still blowing her horn.
To WHO CARES:
The tax exempt property in the Town of Farmington hovers in the 35% range. Maybe a little more now. But that includes the hospital, the churches, the non-profits if they “own” the building they’re in, such as the Historical Society. Pierce House and the Water Dept. are also included in the list. The town puts a “value” on all the properties, but I’ve discovered that the values tend to be low. That reduces the town’s value – help for some of the things at the State level, and hurts us other ways.
One day I took time to add up the values of all UMF properties; at that time I discovered there were 3 buildings on the campus not even in the list. With the “assumed” value of the buildings (not including the ones missed) times the mill rate of that year, which was about $18.50 that year, if the University were to pay taxes, the sum was roughly $996,000/year. Take that number, times it by 15, and just in the last 15 years, you’ll see what we’d have to rebuild roads and help the schools. We could have three Taj Mahals.
It is definitely not true that other districts are doing better than we are with keeping budgets in line. We spend less per pupil than 3/4 of the school districts in Maine, and in this region. We also haven’t been losing students as fast as other districts. I would put our budget up against any as a model for frugality. This one gives an historical record – note the average increases across the state in many years are about 5%: http://www.maine.gov/education/data/ppcosts/index.html
Note that in the first decade of the century average school district increases were up around 5% a year – that’s when a lot of new costs got put on the schools. That’s when property taxes shot up. We’re all dealing with the same kind of demands. Click to get PDFs to compare school districts on many factors. When one actually looks at the data, it shows we compare very well.
NOW WE CAN CUT EVEN MORE FOR THE NEXT ROUND
Let’s tax the churches. It’s time they pay their way.
@Guppy don’t under estimate the homeschooling resources out there. Where there’s a will there’s a way. I’m not the most intelligent person but I chose to homeschool my special needs son rather than put him in Farmington school. I don’t like the negativity, bullying, and the fact special needs are obviously not respected by a lot of people. I mean just look at the comments in the last few days . I’ve never been so happy about keeping my son home to school him. We pay hundreds in tax dollars to the district every year and I hope someday I’d use them as a resource for my son if they earned that trust but as of now it wouldn’t happen . ….ever.
Split the difference, the way democracy was intended, pass it and move on. Both sides will be unhappy. Perfect!
Of course churches should be taxed, but that will never happen! On the other hand the college is vital to Farmington.
@Home school – I’ve seen the home schooling resources. It’s not actually that impressive. Most home-schooled kids are several grades behind their peers. People love to tout “statistics” that home-schooled kids do better than public school students on certain tests, without factoring in that only excelling home-schooled kids take those tests – which severely skews the results. Many home schooled kids have a very inflated view of their scholastic abilities. It was always interesting to watch the home schooled kids fall apart academically and socially during their first semester of college. I also saw it when people thought they’d come back into the public system “just for high school”. There is a huge industry built around home schooling and a lot of it depends on convincing home schooling parents that their kids are getting some sort of advantage. I’ve also seen the results of kids pulled out of school due to “bullying” several times. It’s never pretty. Instead of learning how to deal with these things as a kid with people they can lean on, they end up having to deal with the exact same things as an adult without that support system.
So David, let’s tax the churches? Isn’t that advocating taxation without representation? It’s no secret that the majority of people in this area do not want churchgoers to be involved in societal affairs. Smooth move, tax them, but they can just shut up when it comes to matters of “secular society”. Tax the churches and your precious separation of church and state goes bye-bye.
Legislation is needed on several issues involving school budgets. FIRST, one person, the superintendent, and a handful of school board members(with weighted vote system) should NOT have the power to set the tax amounts on real estate. Why do you think 50-60 percent of the tax dollar goes to the RSU? SECOND, limits should be set on how much a budget can increase in any given year. Third, cross section of community members should be mandatory and appointed by selectboard, not elected. Each town should have one rep. on the board and 5 at large, drawn from a pool like jurors. FOURTH, special ed. mandates need serious reworking. All you guys/gals please add more ideas and amendments. Thanks
@Woodsman- you just struck right at the very heart of the problems here. We seriously need to work at implementing every single one of those ideas. HERE, HERE!!
@ Woodsman where in the world do you get off saying Tax amounts on property is set by the school board. The evaluations are set by the State of Maine The board has nothing to do with it. Secondly less the half your taxes go to the school. You can’t cap increases you never know what can happen. As for the board you are free to run any year your town has an opening
I like weighted voting, with it each citizen is equally represented, and each towns population is equally represented..1 vote for every 18 citizens….
That’s interesting I know if many homeschooled children recently that have attended college and they’re doing perfectly fine as a matter of fact half of them are excelling.
Time have changed and so have the resources for us a homeschoolers. Also my son never started in public school and never will . I see and hear plenty wirh my own eyes to know it still exists and as a parent it’s our job to protect them. My son gets plenty of socialization but it monitored and supervised as it should be in our schools here but it’s not . It’s unfortunate we can’t utilize our hard earned tax dollars by sending our special needs son to school but the school quality of education and care isn’t up to our standards . Like I said I hope some day that may change but until then he’ll have to stay away from ” those kind of people “.
We had new voters on the rolls now who will be following up in 30 days to make sure the newly registered change their drivers license and registration on vehicles (which EXCISE TAXES GET COLLECTED)
Before the meeting tonight, I would encourage everyone to view the NCLB District report card. It is on the district web page under “District Information-NCLB report cards. I viewed the District report card.
Scroll down to pages 19-22. This states that for the 2014-2014 school year, only 42% of students in grades 3-8 were considered proficient in Language Arts/English. This means less than half of students leaving grade 8 are meeting the set state standards. Math is worse off. Only 30% of students in grades 3-8 are proficient.
High school is even worse. At the high school level (page 21) only 40% of students tested were proficient in Language Arts/English. And only 11% were proficient in math (page 22). WHAT?!?!? How is this even possible? At first I thought I was reading it wrong but sadly I don’t think I am.
It seems to me that there are other problems going on here, and that trying to throw more money at the problems is not going to fix anything. I’m not blaming teachers or administrators, but a school system graduating only 11% of kids that are proficient in math is failing. Something needs to change.
District Report Card
The issue here is that school is no longer school. It has become a social welfare program rather than a place of education. It has had to become a welfare program out of necessity, yes, but as a result we have all these problems. Schools no longer just educate kids- they feed them for free, counsel them, provide behavioral services, vaccinate them, provide before school and after school child care, etc. So of course all of these extra welfare services cost money.
We need to providr for our schools now how about a Renters Tax FOR EDUCATION? If we want our schools funded why not some parity on who pays for the schools
Captainoblivious,
The person who owns the rental property pays property taxes. That money comes from the rent. It’s silly to argue over who pays more towards our schools. Even people who don’t own a home or pay rent here end up funding our school system – through sales tax and income tax. A huge portion of school funding doesn’t come from local property taxes.
For those who want to diss our schools and teachers – our district is one of the top 25 in Maine! https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/s/maine/
About renters – renters pay property taxes indirectly as part of their rent goes to pay property taxes. If property taxes are increased, rents rise. So asking renters to pay more would be to double tax them.
It is good to see that the debate has been shifted away from kids to renters, churches, and homeschooling.These new targets aren’t any more culpable but at least the kids are getting a break.
Perhaps we should focus our attention to the real path to long term relief- holding our elected representatives accountable for passing laws that ensures the state actually pays for what the law requires to be paid towards education. if 1% of the anger that was directed towards “special education” was focused towards our politicians maybe something really important will happen.
Folks, you now know who forced this train wreck on our community. Vote then out. Have a nice day out there.
Rick, not all of the “welfare” you list is paid out of the school budget. They don’t pay for the flu shots or before and after school care. The vast majority of kids are not in need of behavioral/social services. The entire country is experiencing a drug crisis and most families have both parents out of the house working. Plus we had a major recession 10 years ago that we haven’t recovered from. Back in the day, kids in trouble were left to flounder. Now out of compassion and out of legality (because not everyone has compassion), we try to help. There are a lot of social services and churches and volunteers around the area who do a ton to help. Plus the state and federal governments. None of us want these extra expenses but here they are.
To all those fighting this budget. If you keep going after the most vulnerable among us and those with learning disabilities, you will lose. When we go back to the drawing board once again, let us remember we that “love one another” stuff that has gone out of fashion apparently. I would never suggest the elderly “just move” anymore than I would want any of you to say that special ed kids should be home sitting in a corner.
Nancy Porter has done her home work on the untaxed properties.
Friends have become enemies all the while UMF sits back and laughs at us for fighting it out.
why has this not been debated before? because its easier to attack the RSU 9 administrators and faculty?
Its time for “All” to pay their share.
SCOTT ERB, I wish you’d check your statistics closer. AND CARLSON who do you think is the biggest contributing factor in the tax percentages in our towns. THEY all wait to send tax bills for RSU to come up with figures.
And the name calling and fighting go on by people that don’t have the chutzpah to use their real names.
@ Woodsman you are missing the point here. The percentage are already in place. The amount of money the towns pay depends on the budget we pass. hence the State is funding at 53 % we the towns must come up with the other 47%. It’s the people of RSU 9 who can vote that decide if it passes or not
“Perhaps we should focus our attention to the real path to long term relief- holding our elected representatives accountable for passing laws that ensures the state actually pays for what the law requires to be paid towards education. if 1% of the anger that was directed towards “special education” was focused towards our politicians maybe something really important will happen.”
“Perhaps we should focus our attention to the real path to long term relief- holding our elected representatives accountable for passing laws that ensures the state actually pays for what the law requires to be paid towards education. if 1% of the anger that was directed towards “special education” was focused towards our politicians maybe something really important will happen.”
ABSOLUTELY!
To everyone harping on UMF paying taxes,
UMF is a state-owned university. That means it would be the state who was really paying the property taxes. The state already contributes to the school budget and to our local costs. It would just be a giant complicated money shuffle for them to “pay taxes”. I guess people want more state administrative costs so they can feel better about their personal taxes. Asking for money from UMF, is just asking the state for more money than we already get.
It’s obvious that this is an important topic to the community and Bulldog readers. But only 102 responses? Come on folks, the article to name the new Wilton Ice Cream store a couple of months ago got 117 responses. A sad comment on our priorities. You now may resume your trolling.
I’m pretty sure homeschooling has something to do with this. When we pay a high rate of taxes and we don’t trust this district to do right by our disabled son regarding his academic needs and another things so we homeschool him instead ? I’d say it’s fair game to mention that . When you’re a Mt.Blue parent maybe you’ll understand.
“When you’re a Mt.Blue parent maybe you’ll understand.”
If your kid isn’t in Mt. Blue, you’re not a Mt. Blue parent. From what you’ve said – you have no first hand experience with having a special needs child in this public school system. Home schooling is a choice people are free to make, but please don’t advise others on who to trust based on hearsay. Let’s get back to the topic of funding public schools.
@ Woodsman. After reading your comments about 50 to 60 percent of your tax dollars going to budget. I took a look at the numbers. It was quite amazing actually. This is based on the proposed budget back in Aug of $33637093. It showed the State portion of the budget was 20,213,319.00 or 61.35% of the total. While the local share for the 10 towns is 12,526,774 or 37.24%. So where are you getting your information from? Check them out yourself if you don’t believe me
Can we get real about Homeschooling? I have to work a full time job. This is not a luxury, hobby or something I choose to do for the thrill of filling day after day withe clerical bliss. My son likes to eat, so I go to work so I can feed him. My son likes a roof, even if it does leak. so I go to work to provide it. I pay my property taxes so that he can have a good school to go to, I have roads to drive on without losing my car in a pothole (at least that is the idea), and my town clerk can have the job of taking care of all the administrative stuff that is involved with being a citizen of Franklin County and Maine. Homeschooling is not an option for many parents and to suggest that somehow we should relieve the school of their federal responsibility to provide an education to all children is akin to expecting Santa Clause to bring me a Ferrari.
I took up the Big spending liberals on doing some research.
You can go to the district website and verify my work.
Briefly, spending is UP 23 percent in five years.
4.6 percent annualized. Look at the bar charts and they are up and two the right with a steep staircase pattern.
I have no idea what they are talking about when they are saying they are spending neutral.
Interestingly, on the revenue side, It shows the State contributions flat lining with a slight up trend. Around 2 percent annualized.
I don’t understand how they say what they do with implied conviction. Like they are right.
They are knowingly misleading people. SAD 9 and then some.
The spending numbers confirm they are out of control and the revenue numbers confirm who is paying for it.
Yes, the past two years has been better but 8 to 10 percent a year in 2013to 2016
It was all to get a vote very sad liberal agenda.
I’ve had other children in the district and I know first hand how this school system works and that’s EXACTLY why I do homeschool my special needs child. His needs will be met . I take my job as a parent seriously just as these teachers should.
It is actually amusing. Those who voted yes got the budget from 2016-2017. Those who voted no got the same thing !!!! Why? because the budget now in place, because of STATE LAW, is the last official one, which is the 2016-2017 budget. Also notice, despite the grave claims that art will be cancelled, sports cancelled, music cancelled, 30 employees will loose their jobs If the budget to be voted on became effective nothing has happened. The evil budget that people voted down on Tuesday has been in effect for two and a half months and no catastrophe has occurred.
Guppy
We actually homeschooled 3 kids so I know about that drill. The last one we sent to high school because we were not qualified to do that level of instruction.
I am a supporter of homeschooling- I actually had to threaten a lawsuit to allow my homeschool kids to access services offered at the school- the school was very anti homeschooling – but interestingly at the time mount blue was not. We paid property taxes while we were homeschooling.
We now have a kid in middle school and a kid in high school.Not in the mount blue system. One of them has an IEP so understand challenges as well.
Did not mean to insult homeschoolers- if you can do it- a lot of parents can not because of work demands- then all the power to you and your child since there really is nothing like a personalized program designed around a student.
It is my understanding that the most recent budget approved at the budget meeting stays in effect following a failed validation vote. Therefore, the district has actually been operating under three budgets: $33.9 million, $33.5 million and now $32.6 million.
@ Bill Reid you really have no clue what you are talking about. If this last budget passed that is exactly what would have happened.. The longer this goes and some how the anti school budget people prevail. it will result in even bigger losses in programs and people
Dear Bill Reid,
It only went into effect on Sept. 5th. Prior to that the district operated on the budget set July 25. So as of July 1st the district had not been running on 2016-2017 amounts. Until Sept. 5
Administrator, take a look at the white sheet for September’s 2017 budget setting information. It says the “Current Budget 2016-2017” is the budget. Did you get it wrong. You did not give us the correct information on the Budget Review sheet !?!?
Bill, we also didn’t hire a full time ASL when that budget was officially in place. But in this case, a $32 million budget is in place until the next one is passed. There is no way we’d spend that much money before late October. Thus there is no reason to make layoffs or cuts if we do not expect that budget to last longer than a few weeks.
I suspect they just didn’t update the header. All three budget sheets are labeled the same.
To be clear: Administrator is the Daily Bulldog administrator, not a RSU 9 administrator. We don’t draft the budget review sheets.
I think you are confused. Read the the material , the white sheet. It clearly says the current budget for 2016-2017 IS the current budget. Someone in RSU9 ought to do some proof reading. Was the information on the white sheet false?
Administrator, none of the budgets you cite were ever validated. Only the 2016-2017 was validated, i.e. approved in 2016.
Correct, they were not validated. However, the Maine Revised Statutes (Title 20-A, Chapter 103-A) indicates that “the latest budget approved at a regional school unit budget meeting” is “automatically considered the budget for operational expenses” if a budget should not be approved prior to July 1. Therefore, the district has actually been operating on three different budgets–the $32.6 million budget has only been in operation since early September.
What is a “‘ a regional school unit budget meeting?” Is it what the Board did last night? Is it the Board meeting done with public vote at a budget setting meeting? Is it a validation referendum vote? This is all vague. Which meeting is iit? Yet the “current budget” as indicated as the 2016-2017 budget on the white sheet, the pink sheet, and the blue sheet which was valid in 2016. How could these various budgets be current given what the white sheet tells us?
Administrator (whoever he or she is and is either from the school administration or the Daily Bulldog ) tells us “Therefore, the district has actually been operating on three different budgets–the $32.6 million budget has only been in operation since early September. that either it is in effect because it was at the setting meeting, which happened in early September, or the Board’s putting it out in the so called “Budget Review” which resulted from some Board meeting. And yet the three sheets all say the CURRENT budget is the 2016-2017 one.
I almost think i’ve a chair sitting at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
If we could only put this much energy into working then paying taxes wouldn’t be a problem. If everyone payed their taxes we wouldn’t have such high taxes. If we stop electing people who use social media to prey on mental instability and insight anger and frustration using blame and victimization, there wouldn’t be a problem. In crazy town USA we instead we get up in arms about funding community health and preventative measures and then spend incredible amounts in emotional crisis to treat immediate problems. The outcome in this community, no matter how it turns out, needs to be a win/win for our children and ourselves. We as adults and taxpayers need to listen and speak with honest and clam voices to order to be heard. There are those who want emotional outbursts and crisis mentality to rule our public choices but I guarantee this is only to serve personal/ political gains and not to benefit the needs of kids or taxpayers.