Reorganization Planning Committee Meeting
4 June 2008 DRAFT Minutes
Present: Facilitator Bill Ferm Chair Gail Marshall Vice-Chair Brian Hubbell
Mount Desert: Laurel Robbins, Patrick Smallidge Southwest Harbor: Skip Strong, Amy Young and Kristin Hutchins Tremont: Amy Murphy, Scott Grierson
Others in attendance: Rob Liebow, Patrick Barter, Nancy Thurlow, Kelley Sanborn, Judy Sproule, Kathleen Rybarz and Heather Jones
Commencement of Meeting
Gail Marshall called the meeting to order at 7:02 p.m.
Review of Draft Minutes from 28 May 2008
MOVED by Skip Strong and seconded by Brian Hubbell to approve the minutes of 28 May 2008, as written. The motion passed with one abstention (S. Grierson)
Public Comment
None
Report from Trenton and Lamoine
Judy Sproule – Trenton school board meeting next Tuesday. They have asked Rob Liebow to attend to answer questions or address concerns people may have about Trenton joining this group. School board and majority of RPC members have determined that it is in the best interest of their students to ask to join this group. Not suggesting that there is anybody opposed to this, just not prepared at this point to make that decision. However, everybody was in agreement that tonight Judy ask if we can plan to talk about how to comply with filing a notice of intent that fits us together. Trenton has scheduled a public hearing for June 17 and will make a final determination at a special school board meeting.
Gail Marshall – Spoke to Judy Sproule this afternoon and discussed leaving our notice of intent, in terms of the players who are on it, as it is now which is the people that make up Union 98. Along with that notice of intent we will be sending a summary of our progress to date with respect to our overall goals of the plan. In the cover letter we can mention that we may at some point file an amended notice of intent that might include Trenton as a member of our RPC. That would give us a chance to continue on our path. If they decide to proceed in this fashion, then we would set an RPC meeting and the agenda would be “Trenton” and their RPC members could join us in that discussion and this group would have to make a decision. Technically it would be each of the school administrative units that would make a decision about whether or not they wanted to partner with Trenton. By doing this we deal with the deadlines and leave time for a good in depth discussion. By bringing them to the table we’re not saying they are in our system, but we’re saying we want to have a discussion with them to determine if it makes sense for them to join.
Brian Hubbell – That makes a lot of sense. Thinks the Department of Education would be pleased that we are going to talk to Trenton.
Patrick Smallidge – Are we talking about Trenton joining the structure of Union 98? Or would they be joining Union 98 and the structure of the high school also?
Gail Marshall – That would be part of the discussion.
Patrick Smallidge – There could be huge implications. Funding formula.
Brian Hubbell – This group can only talk about another town joining us in our alternative organizational structure and the high school is a discreet independent piece within that. That’s not to say we can’t talk about it. I think it would be a different venue for discussion about how another town would join the high school.
Rob Liebow – The Private and Special Act talks about somebody being added but they have to abide by the terms of the formula unless the group who made it up chooses to change that. They can’t set a different formula for an incoming player.
Bill Ferm – Trenton is continuing discussions and it seems they may have a better idea of whether they want to join or not in the next few weeks.
Gail Marshall – Technically the language of including other people wouldn’t be in the letter of intent but just in the cover letter.
Judy Sproule – The only question I have is how we (Trenton) deal with our notice of intent.
Kristin Hutchins – Heard Trenton say they want to continue to maintain school choice. If they join us, they wouldn’t join the high school, would they?
Gail Marshall – This would be discussed later.
Kathleen Rybarz – Lamoine met informally and are leaning toward forming an AOS with Union 92.
Report from Superintendent and Business Manager
Rob Liebow - We have requested a financial template from the state on how they come up with the state subsidy amounts.
Special Education Common Reserve Proposal
Kelley Sanborn – Distributed spreadsheet of summary of special education reserve accounts by town. Different towns fund their special education reserve in different ways. Through MaineCare, we get reimbursed for some health related services that we provide to special education students (speech language, occupational therapy, counseling, etc.). We do not get a per-pupil per-hour kind of reimbursement. We get an allocation per child who is MaineCare eligible. This summary shows a trail of MaineCare reimbursement each town has received for the last 4 years,. This is the funding that will be drying up as of July 1. Most of your towns began putting this money in their reserve accounts because we did not know how long this money would last. We did not rely on this money to pay for programming because we weren’t sure how long that funding would be in place. You’ll also see an amount that was budgeted in each of those years if there was any money budgeted. Differences by town for how much was spent.
PowerPoint presentation – wanted to be clear of what the goals were in having a consolidated reserve account. We wanted to establish a centralized insurance policy of sorts to fund unanticipated special education costs. This would allow us to mitigate the impact of high cost placement from member school budgets, allow a pool of resources rather than maintaining separate accounts, establish consistency in how our member schools are funding and using the special education reserve.
Brian Hubbell – Are we clear on what unanticipated costs are?
Kelley Sanborn – Everyone has defined this differently. It will be covered later in the presentation. Showed summary of current reserve balances. Really solid reserve accounts in our elementary schools and high school here on MDI. Swan’s was pretty much wiped out. Frenchboro has not historically had a reserve account but have added one. Cranberry has used the MaineCare reimbursement to fund this.
Gail Marshall – We should be clear that what we are talking about is that sudden shock and that’s what we use our reserve for. If it becomes an ongoing expense we should put that in the budget.
Kelley Sanborn – Need to clarify. There have been differences in protocol and practice in different schools.
Out of district placements that weren’t anticipated used this account.
Skip Strong – What’s the worst-case scenario?
Kelley Sanborn – In a year, probably $120,000. That’s for a student that we would have to find a residential program out of state for and provide transportation. That’s not a static number. Each year it increases. We’ve done a really good job of educating our kids here in Union 98. We’ve developed a relationship with KidsPeace that is working well and they have a day program that we can use. We’re working within our Union and surrounding districts to collaborate and accommodate these students.
Patrick Smallidge – A lot of this does hinge on the definition of unanticipated. Where the state took an ax to special education support, does that count as unanticipated? Then you start to set a precedent to say we’ve got to cover up the state’s inadequacies. Then you almost forbid having a discussion on individual programs. If we have a mechanism where the town burned through the reserve and we had several high need kids and used up $250,000, there is no way that any kind of body at this level can mandate the legislative body of the town to cough up the $250,000. There has to be a way to deal with it. Maybe you have three years to repay it.
Gail Marshall – With respect to the unanticipated issue, the only body that was affected in an unanticipated way was the high school because we already had our annual meeting in February. Other budgets were adjusted prior to town meetings to reflect those issues. With respect to legislative bodies, you quickly and dangerously get into the realm of judicial bodies telling you what to do if you’re not careful. As we listen to this excellent presentation (by Kelley Sanborn) I would like us to proceed with caution and humility or reserve and ask ourselves if this is an RPC inter-local agreement issue or an educational policy issue we should leave for the body that gets formed under the inter-local agreement to tackle.
Kelley Sanborn – Important for each of the towns to understand a little bit more. The high school, between 2004 and 2008, although we received MaineCare reimbursement, none of it is going into the reserve account.
That’s because in the 03-04 school year we reached the cap the school board set of $100,000. The reserve account has stayed status quo and the money, $45,000 this year, is going into the budget as an offset.
Nancy Thurlow – We did budget for $32,000 worth of that $45,000, but the rest of it is unanticipated that will help the carryover.
Kelley Sanborn – This is money we can’t count on in the future. (Next slide) Bar Harbor. MaineCare reimbursement has gone right into the reserve in each of those years and no money was allocated in the budgets. So 100% going into the reserve comes from MaineCare. The same for Mt. Desert and Southwest Harbor, but the amount spent out of the reserve for Southwest Harbor has been substantial. Tremont was feeling the amount they were getting from MaineCare wasn’t enough so each year for the last three years they have put $10,000 of their budget into that so it offsets the amount they get in MaineCare reimbursement. Swan’s Island is putting money aside from their budget as well as from MaineCare reimbursement but there are fewer students who are allowing the MaineCare reimbursement. There are times that the state is delayed in getting their money to us and we might not get the check until the next school year. Cranberry and Frenchboro do not get MaineCare reimbursement. They have just started putting money aside.
These are questions the RPC needs to consider or ask the board that will be formed to consider. How will member schools pay into the reserve account? Will that be based on a percentage of their total budget or their special education budget? Should member schools who access funding through the reserve one year be assessed an additional fee in the next budget cycle? What should be the protocol for accessing the reserve account? Under what circumstances should it be used? Will budget freezes be required prior to accessing that account? Who is responsible for authorizing those expenditures? Should a cap or limit be established for the reserve account? If so, what amount is reasonable?
Scott Grierson – Are we talking about creating a new reserve pool? What about the existing amounts in each of these budgets? That all just gets lumped together?
Kelley Sanborn – How does that get established?
Scott Grierson – Just looking at some of the towns that were frugal or lucky and have a substantial reserve which could be used to lower their school costs in any given year. If one school has $4,100 and another $217,000 lumping it all together might not work out for one school as opposed to another.
Kelley Sanborn – The purpose of the special education reserve is to protect individual schools from that unanticipated hit on their budget. What we discussed here last week was should we pool that and combine our resources to address that.
Scott Grierson – Pooling in the future sounds great, but if one school board has been able to work up quite a reserve account but another has not been as frugal, why should the frugal board be punished?
Kelley Sanborn – It’s not as much about frugality as it is about unanticipated costs that come up.
Gail Marshall – Thinks this is a worthwhile discussion but thinks it is an educational policy discussion. It doesn’t fit as well in this structure’s task. It probably should be an alternative organization board process. The purpose of this is like buying disability insurance. How you pay and how much would need to be figured out. Everybody has different numbers of kids. Swan’s Island just got hit with massive expenses and got wiped out. Do we want to provide an opportunity to insulate whoever happens to get hit like that?
Brian Hubbell – Think it’s appropriate for us to talk about the desirability of establishing a pool. The mechanics of how the pool would operate does not have to be established as part of the inter-local agreement.
Laurel Robbins – What does the law tell us we have to do in terms of pooling our special education money?
Gail Marshall – This is an optional discussion we are having. We’re allowed to continue to maintain our own school systems independent of one another except for the functions of the central office board in which we have to pool our resources to provide special education administration.
Brian Hubbell – From my point of view, what we’re talking about is whether this is something that we would allow the board that governs the alternative organizational structure to oversee in the future. Not the mechanics of how the reserve account would be operated.
Scott Grierson – It seems like there should be some formula for contributions which is not simply how much money you have in the reserve account at your school, whether it’s based on enrollment or some other thing. If you just took the money out of the reserves that would hardly be fair to the town that put away a healthy stockpile.
Kristin Hutchins – I agree that it would make more sense to put off the conversation. I feel like I represent some people who think that what this board should be doing is taking a closer look at some of these things. Why aren’t we doing more of this more aggressively? This is what they are asking.
Bill Ferm – Gail, are you suggesting this board might vote to give the AOS board the ability to define a pooling of special education reserves so it would be added to the summary of the inter-local agreement?
Gail Marshall – You might broaden that to give them the authority to establish reserve accounts that were voter approved.
Patrick Smallidge – I agree with Gail. The AOS is going to be comprised of a number of members that currently sit at this table. This has a great deal of merit. At this time we have enough on our plates with other issues. We shouldn’t borrow trouble. When we submit these plans to the voters, there are already enough issues each town has to throw in the straw that will break the camel’s back. The idea of a consolidated special education fund with a balance formula, initial start up and operation there of is a great idea. Kelley’s work is great.
MOVED by Patrick Smallidge that the RPC consider this not relevant to the reformation to the process that we’re going through and that should be an order for the AOS to address once it is established.
Bill Ferm – What I understood Gail and Brian to say was to put the ability to establish a consolidated pool as part of the proposed inter-local agreement for the new AOS.
Patrick Smallidge – I would think it would be an issue that this structure would address anyway because you are already responsible for the operation of special education through the central office. If you feel we need to directly delegate that authority, it probably is already there.
Gail Marshall – I would suggest that in our inter-local agreement we create the power to recommend this establishment of reserves. Those all have to be approved by the voters in the budget process. We already have the authority to receive and maintain any balances, carry over funds, or general reserves held by the preceding board. We would make sure that the new board had the authority to generate new creatures of that sort for the public’s consideration. If we want to say something specific about special ed then we can do that, but we don’t have to.
Bill Ferm – Patrick has made a motion that has not been seconded.
Patrick Smallidge – MOVE that the RPC defer action on the special education consolidated reserve fund until such time that the AOS can deal with it. Seconded by Amy Murphy.
Scott Grierson – I prefer to table it. Not defer it.
Bill Ferm – If this group voted to defer consideration of this issue, this group would also have the power to reconsider its vote and take the subject back up again.
Gail Marshall – Called for vote. Unanimously approved.
Work Session on Board Composition and Cost Sharing Formula for MDI School System Inter-Local Agreement
Brian Hubbell – This handout is based on information that Dick Spencer gave us when the law was revised. It actually broadens the latitude in the law within systems with weighted voting. The specific application relates to RSU’s which may or may not apply here. Went through exercise of composing a board that met with the restrictions of the law regarding RSU boards. I think it creates a manageable sized board.
Gail Marshall – I appreciate this. Last time we talked about 3 members from each town. Prefer one person getting one vote, but I don’t see how we can justify towns that have populations in the 10’s or the few 100’s having the same number of votes as those towns that have populations in the 1000’s. Then I saw what Brian had done with this and I thought this might be a very good way to deal with this. As the funding formula handles this kind of business in an enrollment way that we try to reflect the power on the board, but we do so in a manner that doesn’t necessarily provide any massive power shifts from one entity to another. I think this answers that problem.
Brian Hubbell – I don’t think it’s important to Bar Harbor in particular that we have one more representative than anyone else, that was just the way the numbers worked out, but I reserve to modify that depending on where we go with the funding formula.
Kristin Hutchins – This preserves the principle of weighted voting, it just works a little better. Are you saying we have to have weighted voting after all?
Brian Hubbell – All I’m saying is that this meets the law in terms of board composition for RSU’s. It will still require some legal opinion.
Patrick Smallidge – What you have done here with island communities is what I had in mind. I do dislike weighted vote. When any one town has more weight than any other two towns I’m uncomfortable with that.
Rob Liebow – If you look at it this way, each member has the same amount of power, then in that case Mt. Desert gets 3 votes and Trenton gets 3 votes, they get the same power. But if you look at the total votes per town would be cast in relation to the census, those 3 voters cast for the town of Mt. Desert a total of 172 votes where Trenton only has 111 of those votes. This is the true one-man-one-vote related to the census where this is more kind of what you brought up where you weren’t completely stripping it out but you still have some difference depending on the size. If you just cast those votes there that’s not truly the reflection of one-man-one-vote but it might be allowed once we talk to Spencer if you don’t have to follow the one-man-one-vote principle. Like here (referencing Brian’s chart) Bar Harbor has almost half the power if you just go by the total votes, where over here they only have a quarter of it if everybody cast an equal vote. This is a compromise between true one-man-one-vote the way the RSU and Union are set up and more like “we don’t think an island with 38 residents should have 3 votes like everybody else” they only get 1 vote, but they wouldn’t only be getting 3 out of 1,000 they’d be getting 1 out of 16. It still puts them at a disadvantage, but it’s a lot more than 3 out of 1,000 than to say 1 out of 16.
Gail Marshall – We don’t have anyone here from the outer islands and that reflects the reality of the difficulty in getting to these meetings. My experience, with the exception of the annual meeting, the Cranberry’s may have 3, every member sits but they have weighted votes. It’s extraordinarily difficult and challenging for them to come off. If we get representation we rarely get more than one person that comes off anyway. If I’m from Mt. Desert and I’m the only person here and it’s weighted voting, I don’t get to pool together the other absent people’s votes. It would be important to share this with them before we make a final decision so that we know they have seen this and they don’t feel like they are being disenfranchised.
I like this potential board arrangement.
Kristin Hutchins – The weighted voting doesn’t seem unfair to me. If I were sitting on the school board I wouldn’t be thinking about what town I was coming from, I would be thinking of whatever issue we had before us and how it affected the kids. So I wouldn’t just be voting with my compatriots from Southwest Harbor. The principle of one-man-one-vote, which the weighted voting expresses, seems obviously fair and I am hearing that this has always worked.
Skip Strong – This gives us a manageable door. If you have equal numbers for everybody, you start getting up into 22 people at a minimum for a board meeting. It starts getting to an unwieldy board size. I think this is something that has worked and it’s still manageable for the way we will have to do business.
Scott Grierson – I think the number of directors is fine. Just throw out the calculator if you can. Why do you need a calculator to determine if you have a quorum or determine the outcome of a vote? If we have the ability to throw out the calculator, let’s do it. It would make meetings so much more understandable to lay persons or if they are coming to their first school board meeting and see people voting one way and another way and then sorting out who is worth how much, if they can get rid of that and come to a consensus anyway, why not just stick with the number of board of directors. The other thing is, weighted votes are based on population but then when we go to the administrative budget it’s not going to be directly based on student population so there are a lot of vagaries out there. I would opt for simplicity and making it understandable to everyone out there.
Patrick Smallidge – Ever since I’ve been a selectman and sat in on school board meetings I’ve always heard how well everyone gets along. If everyone gets along so well, why do we have to have uneven voting status?
Shouldn’t everybody just be the same? That would represent that my one vote is worth 64 little chips and Brian’s is worth 110, that’s not playing fair to everybody. I have no problems with the island communities having one vote. Let’s make everybody an equal player.
Gail Marshall – You think if we accept part of this we should accept the column that says number of directors and we should just do the number of directors. I don’t think anybody is disagreeing with you about that. I would want to be sure that we guesstimate that this is an arrangement that’s not going to make the people in Bar Harbor who are also going to be voting on this plan uncomfortable. What percentage of the budget do they pay?
Rob Liebow – 30 something percent.
Skip Strong – Part of this will be answered by Dick Spencer. As far as simplicity goes, 16 voters and you have 9 people voting it passes. But constitutionally if you have to have one-person-one-vote the only way to do that without having everyone show up is one-man-one-vote. As a concept, this works either by weighted voting or the directors but we have to see what Dick Spencer says. That will give us a choice if we can do it either way. As a concept, I am happy with this.
Brian Hubbell – I don’t think Bar Harbor would have any objection to that. At the same time I would like to go through the discussion in Part B of our agenda because I believe there is a relationship between the two.
Scott Grierson – We have to know what we can do. If we are stuck with weighted voting we’re stuck with weighted voting. If not, I don’t think we should just blindly go ahead with weighted voting when there might be a simpler option.
Gail Marshall – MOVE that we tentatively approve this board composition approach and seek legal counsel on the question of whether or not we can compose a board simply based on the number of directors. Seconded by Patrick Smallidge. Unanimously approved.
Rob Liebow – The mystery column in the Fox formula – what Mr. Fox told me is the reason why this was done is to make sure the islands would end up paying at least 1% of the Union budget. If you just did the average of budget, enrollment, and staff size percentages, this particular year Frenchboro would have only paid .9% of the Union budget, but by going through this 96% of this column and then add ½% they ended up paying 1.41% of the budget. It only affected the little players. Right now enrollment on the islands is pretty high – 15, 19, etc. Back when those numbers were 4 or 5 kids, that column only would have been about .4% which would translate to the island instead of paying the $13,000 it pays now, was paying $4,000 or $5,000 for union services which doesn’t even cover bookkeeping or the superintendent. That’s why he did that column. Years ago before Frenchboro’s enrollment and staff size went up, it used to be 92% of column 5 plus 1%. That hit Frenchboro pretty hard and they came to the board and asked for a change in the formula. That’s when it went to 96 plus 1/2%. The formula made it so everyone was paying at least 1%. If you just went by an average of the enrollment back through, take Frenchboro for example, .7, .8., .9, they would still only be .8. His idea of taking a three-year average doesn’t work. You tweak it when necessary. If you add another player to it, like Trenton, it couldn’t be 96% plus ½%, but you could make it work so everybody was paying at least 1%.
Gail Marshall – I think that’s a valuable goal. Our friends on the outer islands deserve as much support as we can give them. The money they pay now is a good deal for the services they get. We provide principal services to Frenchboro. Sending staff out there and spending nights out there. For the money they spend even under this formula, they get a huge bang for their buck. I’m comfortable with that. But I think we shouldn’t reduce that any now that we understand the formula.
Laurel Robbins – MOVE that we adopt the Fox formula. Skip strong seconded.
Skip Strong - You could look at this formula for any one town’s point of view. There are going to be slight variations in the percentages, but the formula takes into account all the vagrancies and makes it fair for everyone. The paperwork for dealing with Frenchboro will be the same as the high school. There may be a little bit more volume, but there still has to be the same piece of paper filed for each school system. This is a living formula that has been modified and could work if Trenton joined.
Scott Grierson – Since the consistency with staff contracts and salaries came into being, that would have increased the budgets of the smaller schools. Wouldn’t that have tweaked this formula a little bit? Whereas, 15 years ago, a smaller school would have had a smaller gross budget because the salaries and contracts weren’t consistent so when that consistency came about, one of the benefits of a smaller school with lower salaries is gone, the budget goes up, and then it’s paying more as part of the overall package.
Gail Marshall – I think it’s tweaking it, but in a fairer way. You have a teacher in that building and the teacher is requiring as much administrative service as somebody who is being paid more. They are going to need as much interaction with the central office as a similar teacher who has a higher salary. If it tweaked it, it tweaked it in the interest of fairness. The budget may have gone up, but that would have been appropriate.
Scott Grierson – The budget went up but there were the same number of people. So I don’t know if it was fair.
Gail Marshall – For the same number of people, the same person who is in a different building, they are paying more for central office services for a similarly situated teacher than you were. Where’s the fairness in that? If they’re on the same salary scale then you’re paying the same amount.
Scott Grierson – When the formula was established there were different parameters. If it was fair then and a major component of it was changed. It’s different now. Maybe we should tweak it.
Skip Strong – There are going to be ups and downs for individuals as well as for the whole budget, but as far as trying to find a fair playing field, I think it’s about as well as we can do. It’s a model to start with and go forward.
Patrick Smallidge – Brian, here’s your chance to throw us little guys a bone and go to enrollment. And the issue comes of course when we’re going into the funding issue, I’m talking about the funding formula ahead of us, not the current one we have now. If you would go by enrollment you could write that off as Bar Harbor’s commitment and say we gave on this formula. We’ve given on the formula for Union 98 and we shouldn’t have to give on the formula for the high school. I would rather see it as an enrollment option. For Mt. Desert there’s little or no money involved for the small schools who have suffered under the consolidated contracts. It gives them a little break.
Gail Marshall – I will not join in support of my colleague from Mt. Desert on that proposal. I understand what you’re trying to do and in some way, that might be a way to solve it, but I don’t see the internal logic to doing it this way in this system. I’m thinking of our colleagues down the road. When we looked at all our individual bargaining agreements and we put them in a matrix together, we had many occasions when we would look at a provision like bereavement and wonder why we did it that way. No one could remember. There was nothing inherently logical about it. I think the proposal is that we tentatively support this.
Kristin Hutchins – We should compromise for the sake of moving this forward, but we should compromise because it’s a workable compromise.
Rob Liebow – You’d still have to do something for Cranberry and Frenchboro because now they are operating with fairly high staffs for fairly high enrollments. If Frenchboro went to a more typical enrollment like 6 – 7 kids and 1 teacher, and you plug that in, you’re not going to get the $9,000 out of Frenchboro for the union office, you’re going to get $4,000. That wouldn’t come close to the cost. You could make some baseline amount that everybody had to contribute and then go by enrollment.
Patrick Smallidge – In the overall scheme of the world in educational dollars, Mt. Desert Island is pretty small beans. What’s the difference with the four or five major players subsidizing some of the smaller towns like the town of Mt. Desert subsidizes tuition students and to some extent some of the other towns. If you’re going to roll out the red carpet we’re only talking a couple thousand dollars and you still get their students.
Rob Liebow – I would argue that that number is a subsidy right now. We just hired two teachers out there (Frenchboro). I was on the committee along with Ms. Sanborn and Joanne Harriman, who was also serving as the principal. That’s a huge amount of time just for that one aspect. Multiply that by 15 or 20 incidents or events throughout the year and having the curriculum person serving as the principal of that school. Unhappy parents have no one to call. That call goes to the curriculum person right now. For $13,000 that’s a huge subsidy in my opinion.
Gail Marshall – It’s easy to think about subsidizing the folks on Frenchboro, but think about the property valuation and mil rate on Cranberry isles. How could you justify to any town on this island further subsidizing a community that has Sutton Island, Bear Island and the Cranberries. I don’t think this number is very far off from an enrollment formula anyway. I think this more accurately reflects what that office does.
Patrick Smallidge – I agree with you that it is very close in enrollment. As I said at the beginning, I can live with this when it comes down to me personally. The idea of tying a town’s ability to pay based on it’s mil rate or valuation is a total falsehood. Just because you own a piece of property and it has a high valuation is no fair indicator of a person’s ability to pay. I can live with it if no one else wants to deal with it.
Laurel Robbins called the question. Patrick Smallidge seconded. Passed by more than 2/3.
Gail Marshall called for vote. Unanimously approved.
Review and Adopt Outline of Components of Inter-Local Agreement for June 13 Progress Report to Department of Education and Dick Spencer
Gail Marshall – Didn’t add or subtract anything to what we did before. All she attempted to do was extract from that what applied to the AOS board and nothing else. This is in draft form. We’ve added some things tonight that we could fill in. If you review this and feel comfortable approving this in concept as a document we would put in better form in a progress report to the commissioner.
Brian Hubbell – To the commissioner and also to Dick Spencer.
Gail Marshall – Rob, Brian and Gail will meet with Dick Spencer on June 19.
Brian Hubbell – They will meet with him after he has reviewed the progress report.
Patrick Smallidge – In the section that mentions the Private and Special Act that created the high school, take out the part that says “governance and financing mechanism”.
Skip Strong – Under general reserves, we had addressed K-8 schools under the RSU, I just don’t see that it transferred to the new page 3. For this new AOS it’s all incorporated under “budgeting process” which doesn’t specifically address it.
Brian Hubbell – Appropriate to note that we need to add this.
Bill Ferm – Adding a provision on the reserves and the creation of new reserves.
Patrick Smallidge – You could just establish a separate letter (“F”) that is specific to the special education reserve fund. To oversee the creation and operation of Mt. Desert Island School System’s special education reserve fund.
Gail Marshall – I wasn’t trying to limit it to that.
Patrick Smallidge – If you wanted it defined enough that it is a specific enough issue to the AOS, there’s your way to do it.
Skip Strong – If we’re trying to build a document that can go forward, if you leave it that you can create new reserves, it would be up to us to describe to people what kind of reserve we’re going to go with, when we go to the voters. At this point in time it leaves it open for us to do something further.
Brian Hubbell – This is a working document. I think it’s helpful to be as specific as possible in relation to what we want to be able to cover.
Laurel Robbins MOVED that we approve this draft outline in concept.
Gail Marshall – As long as “in concept” doesn’t preclude us using it as an actual basis for preparing the real progress report.
Laurel Robbins – With the understanding that Dick Spencer is going to see it’s going to the commissioner.
Patrick Smallidge AMENDED THE MOTION to also include the positions that were voted on tonight to fill in the blank spots. As amended, Patrick Smallidge seconded. Unanimously approved.
Next meeting: Wednesday, 2 July 2008
Items to be discussed: Trenton and Response from Dick Spencer and the Department of Education
Adjournment
MOVED by Laurel Robbins, seconded by Skip Strong, and unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting at 8:45 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Selena Dunbar, Recording Secretary