BRUNSWICK — A collaboration between state legislators and town officials is expected to bring some relief to Brunswick’s school budget woes.
Town Manager Gary Brown said Monday that $350,000 will likely be available to the Brunswick school department after the town secured a state Municipal Partnership Initiative (MPI) grant for road improvements along Bath Road near Cook’s Corner. State funding for the road project would free up additional local funding for schools.
Brown said that he became aware of the state funding source through Brunswick’s legislative delegation and that the award will help the school offset an expected loss of $3 million for the 2012-13 fiscal year.
On Monday, the Town Council approved an application for the grant, which municipal staff had already submitted to the state to meet a March 9 deadline.
The council voted unanimously in favor of sending that application.
Brown said Monday that Town Engineer John Foster has already received confirmation that the town will receive funding for the Bath Road project in the application process he said “ was very fast-tracked.”
The project will include repaving a stretch of road from the Merrymeeting Plaza intersection to the Cook’s Corner intersection as well as 500 feet of Gurnet Road.
The project also will seek to upgrade the traffic lights to video recognition systems along that same stretch of road.
According to the application from Foster, most of the work would be done at night. Brown said town staff would hope to complete the project sometime in early August so that road work does not interfere with the 2012 Great State of Maine Air Show at the Brunswick Executive Airport, which is scheduled for late August.
Councilor Benet Pols said Monday night that the $350,000 of local funds now freed to go to schools would representa1percentincrease in taxes if that amount of revenue were raised through taxes.
Earlier this month, following a public input forum on the school budget, Brunswick’s state legislators said they were working to find ways to secure funding for Brunswick schools to augment the annual state education subsidy, which will decrease in 2012-13, in large part because student population in Brunswick has declined since the closure of Brunswick Naval Air Station.
“Money comes out of Augusta in different ways,” Sen. Stan Gerzofsky said after the March 8 school budget forum. “You don’t just have to get education money, you can get money elsewhere that would offset education money — backfill it another way.”
At that time, Gerzofsky declined to specify the possible sources for that state funding.
Rich Ellis, chairman of the school department’s budget committee, said he learned about the plan to seek more state money in an email sent Monday afternoon.
Ellis said that Superintendent of Schools Paul Perzanoski had on Monday sent an email to Brunswick legislators to thank them for their efforts to secure the additional funding.
dfishell@timesrecord.com
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
