Last week, Gorham Superintendent Heather Perry said the school committee instructed her to manage the budget to a tax rate mill increase of $1.30. This is wrong.
First, it would mean a real estate tax increase of more than 10%. Just for the school department.
Second, the notion that the school committee manages the mill rate increase is abhorrent. No one knows what the total assessment value will be until town, county and school budgets are set and total assessments are fixed. It is incomprehensible that our schools do not hold increased spending to a reasonable amount over the current year.
Third, the superintendent indicated to the teachers that the $1.30 was only a guideline, giving the impression that more money would be available.
Yet she’s spent tens of thousands of our tax dollars on non-education programs. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (Critical Race Theory on steroids), pornographic books and gender manipulation are the new bedrocks of Gorham schools.
Many neighboring towns set a spending limit at the beginning of each school budget year. The Town Council has failed Gorham citizens by not clearly setting a firm limit on a school spending increase.
Every year the superintendent begins with a barrage of supposedly necessary expenditures. This year is a record high 35%. Part of the argument for large increases is always labor. Yet the labor contracts are negotiated by the superintendent just prior to annual budget increase requests. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to claim labor costs are high and uncontrollable.
Finally, the school will reduce planned capital expenditures, then as the capital needs build up, taxpayers will be asked to borrow the funds needed to correct deferred maintenance. This is a charade.
Our council must tell the school that only a certain percentage increase will be passed for voter approval. I suggest not more than 5%.
Jim Means
Gorham
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