SAU16 Budget Advisory Meeting Recap
Updated: Sep 20, 2021
Thursday, September 16 the SAU16 Budget Advisory Meeting (BAC) was held to discuss the proposed budget for the School Administrative SAU16. This budget provides the salaries of the Superintendents, support staff and business offices. During this meeting the proposed budget for FY23 was presented by Mollie O’Keefe, Executive Director for Finance and Operations. The meeting was attended by 6 School Board Chairs and Superintendent Ryan.
To summarize the administration proposed budget increase of $204,369.35 for a total administrative budget of $2,756,960. The majority of this budget is tied to administration contracts, with 6% tied to operating expenses, and 2% to conferences and training with a total proposed increase of 8%.
$153,379.67 of this budget is allotted to the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) position, which is currently in the Cooperative School Budget.
$78,589.69 is earmarked for salaries, retirement, GMR increase of 6%, equity adjustment for the HR director.
$8115.00 is for a phone upgrade
$2300.00 is for unemployment and worker’s compensation
($13,064) - course reimbursement
($4000) - equipment
($18,000) - software replacement
O'Keefe reported that there is "not much wiggle room in the budget since most of it was tied to contracts." She said, “there are not many wants on here, they are all needs.”
When asked for the reasoning to switch the DEIJ position to the SAU budget, Superintendent Ryan reported that he would like for Andres Mejia, Exeter Region Cooperative School District (ERSCD) Director of DEIJ to work in all the SAU16 school districts. Next year they plan to have him work in all the elementary schools, in addition to CMS, EHS, SST, and Adult Education, which is where he is currently working.
Helen Joyce, Chair of ERSCD school board asked why there was a proposed increase in supplemental salaries. Superintendent Ryan reported that this is for retirement support, as he wants to incentivize people to stay in our SAU district.
A question was asked about the unassigned funds. O'Keefe reported that money that was held had to be appropriated to spend it.
Three people on the committee asked no questions about the budget. Superintendent Ryan said they could have time to look through the budget and email him if they had questions before the next meeting.
Joyce asked if they should share the budget with the individual board members before the joint board, and if they could have a link to share. Superintendent Ryan said that they could post the link to it on the budget and elections page. (At this time, the link is not yet available on the SAU16 website).
The next BAC meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 22. We will share the location and time as soon as the posting is published by the SAU. There is no public input during this meeting, but it is open for the public to attend.
This particular budget will be presented to the Joint Board during a budget hearing on October 18. During this meeting, public input pertaining to this specific budget will be welcomed and the members of the Joint Board will be voting to accept or reject this proposal.
A video recording of the September 16 meeting in its entirety can be found here.
Click here for presentation from the meeting.