LISBON

After the town council heard dozens of pleas from community members packing Lisbon Community School’s cafateria — and mostly students asking it to approve the school budget as proposed by the school department — councilors reduced budget articles requiring school officials to find more cuts.

In January, the town council issued a directive to the town manager to find $300,000 in municipal spending cuts and to the Lisbon School Department to take $600,000 from additional local funding — money spent above and beyond the state’s Essential Programs and Services funding model.

The goal was not to have a flat tax rate but a decrease in taxes.

School Committee chairwoman Traci Austen said the school has been told it needs to go back to the basics.

“We are far below the basics. It’s not even funny,” she said. “The EPS formula was meant to be a marker of where you start to educate children, not to be the pinnacle of what we should aspire to.

“We are teetering where the municipality is going to wind up being more of a percentage that is spent than the school district,” within the town, she added. “That is wrong.”

Herbert Reed, who serves on the school commitee, said if the town council doesn’t pass the budget as proposed and insists it cut more local funds, “it’s going to set the school department back 20 years.”

“We have mandates that we have to pay with local funds. We have to raise so much money to get state money,” he said, adding that any additional cuts will be people and programs.

The state only covers 20 percent of co-curricular expenses, Reed said.

“The people are going to be leaving left and right,” he said, “and nobody will want to move into the town and no businesses will want to establish.”

Councilor Eric Metivier argued that the school budget is twice the size of the municipal budget.

“I don’t think $600,000 is unattainable with the size of the budget,” he said. “That budget, out of $15 million, can be cut from wherever they want to cut it (and from any line).”

School officials decide where those cuts are made and if they decide to cut all those co-curriculum programs, Metivier said, “it goes on them. It’s not on us,” which caused people in the audience to break into laughter.

“That’s a great one,” Reed said.

There were several students who addressed the council during the public participation portion of the meeting Tuesday to tell the council of the importance of the programs that additional local funding supports. The council also heard from teachers in the district and the school resource officer, who highlighted the safety issue created by not having an armed, trained officer in the school.

“English, math, science, history,” Lisbon High School junior Cody Campbell said. “This is what our school will look like if this budget is not approved. Notice how there’s no art on this list, there’s no music, there’s no culture.

“That’s because whenever there are budget cuts of this proportion, those are the ones that get targeted first,” Campbell added. “Our school has so much talent that should be explored and not suppressed. This budget needs to be passed because we need to inspire more than just equations in our students.”

The school department has proposed to use bond proceeds from the track and gym projects at Lisbon High School to pay for the debt service — totaling $304,551 — and $143,395 in capital reserve funds. A teaching position was eliminated, a community resource coordinator reduced to half-time, the central office restructured — and total local additional funds reduced by more than $500,000.

Metivier made a motion not to spend any of the $304,551 in excess proceeds from bonds issued by the town for the new gym, which passed 5-2. Councilors Gregg Garrison and Mark Lunt consistently voted in opposition of other councilors budget amendments. Councilor Dillon Pesce supported this motion, noting the gym is still under construction and said the money isn’t excess proceeds, but “perceived excess proceeds.”

Pesce made a motion to authorize the expenditure of $43,260 from the school department’s capital reserve fund for the Siemen performance contract. The amendment passed 5-2 and reduces what the school district would have taken from the capital reserve fund by about $100,000.

Article 15, authorizing the amount to be expended for the town’s share of public education funding, was reduced almost $400,000 to $14,932982. Including adult education, this would put the school spending plan at $15,039,860, though school officials were scurrying to determine if the new numbers add up correctly.

After the meeting, Superintendent Richard Green estimated the overall cuts made through the council’s amended budget articles take reductions to more than $400,000, but he still had to the crunch numbers. Because not as much funding can be taken from the capital reserve fund or excess bond proceeds as planned, the school committee will need to look at where to find that money. Green has added the budget to the committee’s workshop next Tuesday.

The council also voted 5-2 to reject budget articles 1-11 rather than amending those budget amounts to align with the overall budget amendments and put it in the hands of the school committee to determine where the additional cuts be made. Green questioned the legality of the process undertaken by the council Tuesday night.

Councilor Mark Lunt urged voters to get out and vote on the school budget June 9. Voters can vote the school budget up or down and — if they don’t vote in favor of the school budget — can indicate if it’s because it is too high or low in a second, non-binding question that will appear on the same ballot.

dmoore@timesrecord.com