BMR school board OKs new budget
BLACKSTONE – The Blackstone-Millville Regional School Committee has voted to adopt a $22.5 million “bare minimum” school budget for fiscal year 2018.
The $22,576,232 spending plan represents a 2.5 percent increase over the current budget, and is lower than Schools Superintendent Allen W. Himmelberger’s recommended $23,688,078 budget, which proposed a 7.6 percent increase.
A somber Himmelberger said the $22,576,232 budget certified by the Blackstone-Millville Regional School Committee last week is $1 million short of what the district needs to operate next year.
“The $23,688,078 budget is a needs-based budget and is what we need to do our jobs, however, we know that’s not affordable in our current financial environment amongst all tiers of government,” Himmelberger said. “This ($22.5 million) is the absolute minimum we can live with and it will be a struggle.”
Blackstone’s assessment and contribution to the budget is $8,551,754, which includes a $6,236,685 minimal contribution; $1,354,347 in exclusionary costs; and a $960,722 supplemental investment.
Millville’s contribution is $2,753,956, including a $2,025,987 minimal contribution; $368,653 in exclusionary costs; and a $359,314 supplemental investment.
Himmelberger and his leadership and team spent the past three weeks trying to lower the budget increase before a revised draft of the spending plan was presented to the regional school board for adoption.
The certified budget will now go before voters in Millville on May 8 and in Blackstone on May 30.
“For the last three months, the leadership team, the faculty and staff and the School Committee have been challenged by a budget process that has put us in severe jeopardy due to factors beyond our control at the state and federal level,” Himmelberger said. “We are seeing our revenue, reimbursements and grants declining and our expenditures increasing. This combination has put the district at a crossroads.”
From 2009 to 2017, he said, the school district’s general fund budget grew by a net of 4.9 percent, so over the past eight years, the school budget has averaged six-tenths of one percent for an increase.
“In four of those eight years, the budget was reduced from the year before,” Himmelberger said.
But town officials in Blackstone and Milville say they are feeling the pain as well.
Last week, Millville town officials said that community’s preliminary budget for fiscal 2018, which includes level funding for the schools, is already projecting a $210,000 deficit, and there is serious concern whether Millville can afford increasingly higher contributions to the school budget.
Blackstone officials, meanwhile, have been sounding the alarm for the past few years, saying it is getting harder and harder to afford the annual additional contributions to the school budget.
“If we can get through this year we hope there are other opportunities at the local and state level to improve our financial picture,” Himmelberger says.