With a potential loss of 8 percent of its tax base looming, it’s no surprise the Bow budget committee is a little anxious about spending.
Bow budget committee chairman John Heise said last week the committee is “absolutely” looking at the schools’ and town’s budgets through the lens of Merrimack County Superior Court’s ruling on the value of Merrimack Station. Committee members have already inquired about a flat-funded school budget at $26.4 million and are eyeing the town’s proposed $10.1 million budget for cuts.
A recent superior court ruling in December set the value of all Eversource property related to the plant at $67.4 million in 2013, about 42 percent of the valuation used by the town when it sent the company a tax bill. The town has filed a notice of appeal to the state Supreme Court.
“We know there could be a substantial impact financially to Bow taxpayers,” Heise said. If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, or the town loses, Heise said, the budget committee has to think about the future – specifically how the town will handle the loss of tax money to ensure residents don’t see a massive hike in their taxes.
“This is an extraordinary time,” he said.
Those concerns have school board chairman Robert Louf concerned that some programs, such as all-day kindergarten, could be at stake.
The budget committee asked the school board to come up with a list of cuts that would bring the 2017-18 budget in line with the actual amount spent in the 2015-16 budget, Louf said last week. That would mean bringing the $27.1 million proposed budget down to $26.4 million, about a $885,005 reduction.
“When you have a program that costs around $300,000 to operate, and you need to get to that nearly $900,000 number, I don’t see how all-day kindergarten couldn’t be affected,” Louf said.
Louf noted the budget the school board presented this year represented roughly a $300,000 reduction from the superintendent’s initial proposed budget of $27.4 million. To get to that number, Louf said the board got rid of a staffing request for an additional kindergarten teacher and moved some maintenance requests, such as soundproofing the music room at the middle school, into the capital improvement budgets.
As for kindergarten, Louf said the district has seen a 17 percent increase in class sizes since the all-day program was introduced in October 2015. The Department of Education reports the elementary school had a kindergarten enrollment of 67 in October 2014; a year later, enrollment had increased to 76. Louf said the October 2016 enrollment for kindergarten was 96.
Heise said the school district is facing several moving parts this year, such as an increase in employees’ salaries, the maturation of the Bow High School construction bond and additional revenue from Dunbarton students. “It’s not our intention to slice and dice the school’s budget or the town’s budget,” he said.
He also said the request to look at a reduced budget is one the committee makes every year, and that nothing is set in stone. The prospect of cutting all-day kindergarten, he said, never came up in discussion.
“I personally have benefited from all-day kindergarten,” Heise said; his two sons are in elementary school. “I think it’s a phenomenal program.”
Heise said that if the proposed reduction looked like it would impact the district too much, the committee may back off its request.
“We’ve been going through the budget line by line, looking for savings,” Heise said. “But people don’t move to Bow because it’s the commerce mecca of the world; they come here for the school system.”
The budget committee and the school board meet every Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the town offices until the school board’s public hearing, which Heise said is tentatively set for Feb. 8.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)