Scarborough’s proposed $87.4 million combined municipal and school budget, up 6.4% over last year’s, includes raises for employees, new body and cruiser cameras for police, a fire truck, additional school staff positions, upgrades at the high school auditorium and repairs to Black Point Road.
The proposal’s impact on taxpayers won’t become clear until a revaluation is completed later this month, town staff told the Town Council last week. Without the revaluation, the proposed budget would represent a 3.7% tax increase, Town Manager Tom Hall said, and achieving the council’s annual goal of capping budget increases at 5% would result in a roughly 2.3% tax increase.
“Before you’re asked to vote on this budget, and certainly before the voters are asked to consider the school budget, the tax impact will be known and widely publicized,” Hall told the council.
The combined budget came in at $87,412,641, about $6.3 million higher than this year’s spending plan.
The municipal portion of the budget is $24.8 million, an 8.8% increase, while the school’s side is nearly $56.9 million for a 4.7% increase.
County expenses make up another $3.6 million of the budget.
Budget drivers on the municipal side include four collective bargaining agreements up for negotiation, which the town estimates will lead to an increase of over $770,000, and a $400,000 wage increase for non-union employees. Health insurance costs are up by $125,000.
“Just to keep competitive, even middle of the pack, we need to significantly raise our wages,” Hall said.
A big goal of the municipal budget is to retain staff and maintain the quality of town services rather than create new positions, Assistant Town Manager Liam Gallagher told the Leader on Monday.
Expenses toward TIFs call for another $1.1 million, but revenues from those TIFs are reallocated into the budget. The Haigis Parkway TIF is bringing in over $1.4 million, while the Downtown TIF, where The Downs is located, is bringing in $2.9 million.
The town plans to use $985,000 of its “Fund Balance,” which consists of excess funds from past budgets, either due to lower spending than expected or unpredicted revenues, to lessen the impact of its expenses on taxpayers.
On the school side, 80% of the district’s $59.6 million proposed budget goes toward personnel, with health insurance expected to rise by 8%, or $664,000. Other drivers include 11 additional special services ed tech positions for the incoming kindergarten class at a cost of $572,000. Another $94,000 has been set aside for a new teacher at Wentworth and another $94,000 for a new K-2 librarian. Grades K-5 currently share the same library staff.
Additionally, nearly $200,000 is going toward special education positions at Wentworth to continue addressing learning gaps spurred by the pandemic.
“The days of quarantine and masking and some of the COVID experience, the hybrid year and the year after,” Superintendent Geoffrey Bruno told the council last week. “Those feel a little bit like a distant memory, but we are still addressing multiple significant needs with our students across all grade levels.”
To help pay for the positions, Bruno said, they were able to save $336,000 for teaching positions due to class sizes.
“We have three different grade levels that have unusually smaller classroom cohorts, so we were actually able to trim the number of classroom teachers and staff by three,” Bruno said.
They’ve also seen a roughly $1.8 million increase in state contributions.
The combined budget’s capital improvement plan calls for $18.3 million, $11.9 million for town projects and $6.4 million for school projects.
The town’s side includes police body and cruiser cameras and a new pump truck for the fire department at a combined cost of nearly $2 million. Both of those expenses will have to be approved by voters. Roughly $4 million is allocated in the budget for repairs to Black Point Road, which sustained heavy damage during this winter’s storms, but that money will be reimbursed by FEMA.
School projects include $418,000 toward upgrades at the high school auditorium, including replacing the retractable bleacher seats, moveable wall partition, fire-retardant stage curtains and video projectors, all of which are either currently unsafe or are failing, officials said. Another $600,000 will go toward athletic equipment, such as replacing the scoreboards in the high school’s two gymnasiums, goals for middle school soccer and the ongoing turf and track renovation project.
Overall, town staff emphasized, the 6.4% combined budget increase is low compared to recent proposals and the final budget is routinely lower than the original proposal.
Budget roundtables will be held on April 20, 22 and 24 ahead of a public hearing on the budget May 1. The Town Council will vote May 15 to approve the municipal budget and send the school budget to a referendum. Voters will decide on the school budget June 11.
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