Brooksville
Brooksville town meeting
Walker Pond access project funds needed; high school tuition down

By BEN JACKSON AND COLIN POWELL
Dominate” is too strong a word to describe the Walker Pond project’s relation to the proposed 2010 town budget, but it is by far the most substantial new expenditure on the town meeting warrant in Brooksville this year. Town meeting will be held Tuesday, March 2, at 7 p.m. at the Brooksville Elementary School. Polling hours for municipal elections are Monday, March 1, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the town office. Results will be announced at town meeting.

The Walker Pond project shows up under two warrant articles: M20 would raise $30,000 for the shore access project, and M22 would complete the final payment on an $80,000 loan taken out two years ago to help cover the cost of buying half the property. The $30,000 would cover Brooksville’s half of expenses for the proposed road, recently submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection for approval.

Besides a number of housekeeping articles relating to terms of office, town landings, and a proposed salt shed, residents can expect to deal with familiar budget items.

Winter roads, always a sizable expenditure for the town, weighs in at $250,000 this year, same as last year. In addition, a proposed $8,000 would go to the research and drawing up a set of plans for a structure to house town sand and salt. The proposed site is the sand lot below the fire house on Coastal Road.

Article M5 changes the length of terms for the town tax collector and treasurer from two years to one. The move anticipates what Selectman Richard Bakeman hopes will eventually make the town office more efficient. “We could maybe [be] open more if we had two people capable of doing the same jobs,” he says. Cutting down the length of terms is the first step in switching to an appointed position with an hourly rate that could be split between two or more employees.

Articles M14 through M19 all deal with the harbor committee and town landings. For the past “seven or eight years,” says Harbormaster Sarah Cox, the responsibility for town landings has fallen to the harbor committee anyway; “this just formalizes that arrangement.” In that vein, M17 proposes combining the separate “town landings” and “harbormaster and ordinance” accounts into a single “Brooksville coastal account.”

The overall town budget comes in at around $860,000, about a 3 percent increase from last year’s $837,650. Of this year’s sum, $100,000 will come from state Urban-Rural Initiative Program funds for road resurfacing and $11,000 from surplus. Taxes will need to cover $577,827, with automobile excise estimated to bring in $162,358. The mill rate will be announced sometime in early May, after new buildings, land sales and divisions are evaluated.

School budget

The proposed school budget is $1,640,125, a 3.25 percent drop from last fiscal year (just over $55,000). Most of the money ($1,566,945) will need to come from the town.

State subsidies, already affected by fines associated with not consolidating into a larger school system, are “lower this year anyway,” according to Union 93 interim superintendent Dennis Howard, adding they’re “hardly even worth jumping through all the hoops for.”

The town of Surry, now contracting administrative services from Union 93, will chip in about $22,000 this year, keeping the costs of other Union 93 towns, including Brooksville, down.

While the budget as a whole is going down, there are significant increases in building maintenance and faculty pay raises. Performed every few years, the school will refinish the gymnasium floor, an $11,000 expense that, along with other projects, contributes to a 23 percent increase in the school’s building maintenance account. Per contract, faculty members will receive on average a 2.7 percent pay increase, adding $15,000 to the primary-level instructional services account.

Offsetting the cost increases, Brooksville will have to fund tuition for fewer secondary students, with more high school students graduating than there are freshmen entering. This has saved the school department more than $55,000, or nearly 17 percent over last year.

Residents can again look forward to voting on the budget not once, but twice. There will be a second town meeting—the budget validation referendum. This year, besides the question that asks voters to validate the school budget adopted at town meeting, there will be a question asking whether voters wish to continue the BVR for the next three years. Polling hours for the budget validation referendum are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, March 8, at the town office.

Share this page

Return to the The Weekly Packet home page.

---