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Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Heather Smith, Renee Bennett, Sean Harrison elected to ORCSD School Board
Guide to the March 2025 Oyster River School District Election
It's election day! This is my annual voting guide to the ORCSD election. I promised myself I wouldn't just post around election day, and now I've procrastinated for a year to the point that very few people will see this before the election.
I'll try to clearly delineate my opinion in italics from the factual information.
TL;DR: I'm not that sure this year, because I haven't been paying that close attention, but I'm voting for Heather Smith and Sean Harrison in the contested school board race, and YES on everything but article 5, the $531K for architects making plans to mod the elementary schools.
Voting Mechanics
Election Day is Tuesday March 11, 2025. If you're a US citizen at least 18 years of age who lives in Lee, Madbury or Durham (including UNH students who live in the district), you can do same day registration on election day at your town's polling place and vote. Even if you've never voted or registered to vote in New Hampshire before, you can vote Tuesday. Until recently, you could show up without ID and sign affidavits, but now, according to Lee's website: "Proofs of identity, age, citizenship and domicile MUST be presented to register to vote. Click here for an explanation of the requirements to register to vote under the new law." A passport or birth certificate, driver's license and a utility bill or government check with your address would be good documentation for a same-day registrant to have. Already registered voters just need a state photo ID.
Your election day polling place and voting times depend on where you live:
Durham: Oyster River High School 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Lee: Public Safety Complex 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Madbury: Town Hall 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Madbury also has a genuine town meeting, 7 pm at Madbury Town Hall, where they vote on the majority of their warrant articles, but the school district stuff is in the daytime Town Hall election.
As always, voters in each town are given identical school district ballots. Let's briefly go through the ballot questions, also known as the warrant articles.
The Issues
This year the issues are the large budget increase, the controversial teachers' contract, the pricey Moharimet extension and Mast Way renovation (with a down payment on the ballot), the Trump administration ordering DEI programs such as ours ended, and the possible end of our Department of Education funding, and of course the consequence on taxes. We'll talk about them as they pop up below.
The School District Ballot
Article 1 elects the moderator. Former Chair of the school board, Michael Williams, has been doing a great job as moderator, and no one else wants the job, so I'm voting for Michael.
Over a one year term, the moderator generally works two days. The moderator runs the Deliberative Session in February and oversees the school district election and ballot counting in March. Michael has added a third task: moderator of Meet the Candidates night.
The moderator's goal is an unbiased election process in accordance with New Hampshire law. The Town Meeting and School Meeting Handbook, mostly instructions for moderators, runs 101 pages. It says moderators have two year terms; I don't know why ours has a one year term.
The moderator's goal is an unbiased election process in accordance with New Hampshire law. The Town Meeting and School Meeting Handbook, mostly instructions for moderators, runs 101 pages. It says moderators have two year terms; I don't know why ours has a one year term.
Article 2 is the school board member vote. The ORCSD school board consists of three town-specific seats, one each for Durham, Lee and Madbury, which is held by an eligible voter from the specific town, and four at-large seats, each open to candidates from all three towns. Terms are three years. Voters in all three towns get to vote on all members, including the town-specific ones.
This year we choose two at-large school board members for a three year term and fill the Lee school board seat for a two year term.
Renee Beauregard Bennett is an Assistant Superintendent at SAU 16, Exeter. After she failed to win election last March, she was appointed to the board to fill an at-large seat that then member (now chair) Matt Bacon resigned from after he won the Madbury seat last year. She is now running unopposed for the Lee seat. I'm voting for Renee Bennett.
The Lee seat was vacated when current member Brian Cisneros decided to resign. Brian has served in the Lee seat since he was appointed in June 2017. He was just reelected last year. Thank you for your 8 years of service, Brian.
The real race is four people running for the two at-large seats.
Heather Smith is the incumbent, up for reelection after her first three year term. Back then I was initially skeptical as I had never seen anyone who wanted the position so much. But that's Heather -- very enthusiastic, very competent, very hard working, always with the students' best interests at heart. I'm voting for Heather Smith.
I don't know the other candidates. I'll try to gather information. There's very little out there. I can't find candidate facebook sites (except for Harrison) or articles or questionnaires. The main source of information is Candidates Night. I made an auto-transcript and labeled the speakers. I haven't wrestled it into English, but you may be able to skim through that faster than watching the 95 minute forum. I'll jot down a few tidbits.
Nancy Smith - from Madbury. "Principal and music teacher, 5 grandchildren in the district." "I have a desire to protect the district the next few years as things become tumultuous with our government."
I couldn't find anything about Nancy Smith running for school board, the school she worked or works at, or the instrument she plays. She mentioned MATHCOUNTS at the middle school as one of the programs she liked a couple of times, which I appreciate -- I've been the volunteer co-coach for five or six years. ORMS came in first at the Seacoast Regional Meet last month; state meet Saturday!
Sean Harrison - Durham, 2 children, 1 graduated, 1 still in school. Job: Risk Mitigation and Compliance. "I believe in public education." "...policy changes that are coming down from the state or the federal government, whatever they are, we adapt but we don't get distracted, we still stay on it so that when the kids come through those school doors they're provided the best opportunity, the best learning environment they can possibly have, and we support the staff that provides that to them."
He's gotten it together enough to produce a candidate facebook site and I even saw some signs out there in the real world. They're full color, with an apple. They're not the single color signs that subtly convey Yankee frugality.
He's gotten it together enough to produce a candidate facebook site and I even saw some signs out there in the real world. They're full color, with an apple. They're not the single color signs that subtly convey Yankee frugality.
William Howard - did not participate.
This isn't much information upon which to make a decision between these three. Rule out Howard; we don't know anything about him. Either of the others appear fine. Neither of them knows all that much about the issues like DEI at ORCSD. Smith surprisingly knew about Andrew Smith's (no relation) work here back in 2017, though she seemed to think he was district staff, not just a consultant. She did know he sadly died. But she thought we should hire someone to continue the work; i.e. she didn't appear to know the district has a DEIJ Director, Rachel Blansett. So I'm left to choose between a MATHCOUNTS shoutout and the minimum competency demonstrated by getting a facebook page together. I want to go with MATHCOUNTS lady but it looks like Harrison made much more of an effort to run, indicating he'd work hard. Politically, I'll guess they're both on the left, Harrison more centrist. As of now, 2:30 am on election day, I'm leaning toward Harrison.
Article 3 is the giant budget appropriation. One interesting measure is the difference between the operating budget and the default budget, $58M vs $57.48M, $523K, less than one percent. That means a NO win won't have much effect on your taxes -- it would be a mostly symbolic victory. It would however be a huge symbol; in my entire time watching ORCSD politics, for the budget YES always wins in Oyster River, usually by 50 points.
Here's some history: In 2020, this read $47.5M, 2021: 50.2M, 2022: 52.2M, 2023: 53.2M: 2024: 56.2M now $58.0M. That's 5% over last year, 4% annual inflation over the five years. School inflation generally runs higher than the 2.3% general inflation we'd gotten used to. This doesn't seem burn-it-all-down terrible; in fact it's hard to see the spike in inflation in 2022. This doesn't include the spending below.
I'm voting YES, but I'm grumpy about it. The truth is, inflation hits schools like everywhere else.
It's 3AM; let's just include the district's information about the major drivers and the tax increase:
If we believe these numbers, we're looking at (assuming everything passes) at 13.81/12.73=8.4% increase in Durham, 19.72/18.16=8.6% increase in Lee and 22.67/21.34=6.2% increase in Madbury. Ouch.
There's plenty of spending to talk about, but let's just move on.
Oyster River used to be at the high end of the market, paying teachers well. I think what happened is that the teachers negotiated their contract in November, 2019, assuming the last three decades of 2 - 2.5% annual inflation would continue. They negotiated a five year deal of raises of around that magnitude that was approved in March, 2020. Then COVID hit, and we got a bout of inflation 2021 - 2023. Suddenly those raises weren't looking so good. The five years has elapsed, so it's time to get teacher pay back up to market rates, which looks like it happens more gradually than I would have expected.
I gathered a fair amount of gossip about the contract negotiations that I'm not going to report. I'm voting YES.
Back in 2014, we expanded the Moharimet multipurpose space to the property line. It cost $570K to do the entire project! A YES win here means we're paying that just for a year of architectural services this time around, to generate images like the one below. The project will probably cost five or ten times that.
I miss the days of the prefab classrooms at $20K a year. Enrollments are down from those days, enough that the board thought they could safely get rid of the prefabs a few years ago. Enrollment isn't really projected to increase, but space is still tight because we want so many programs. I'm feeling grumpy. I may vote NO.
This is a payment toward buying the middle school solar array, same as the last few years. It's a good deal for the taxpayers to own the array. I'm voting YES. "No amounts to be raised from taxation" is the usual boilerplate lie.
See everybody at the polls on Tuesday.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Ickes, Cisneros and Bacon Win
Newcomer Kelly Ickes won Durham's town-specific school board seat, incumbent Brian Cisneros won Lee's seat, and member Matt Bacon won Madbury's seat in today's election. Michael Williams remains moderator; he ran unopposed. Congratulations to all the winners.
YES won on all school district questions, including the $56.2M budget appropriation; congratulations to the District.
Thanks to wonderful outgoing members Tom Newkirk and Dan Klein for their 11 years and 9 years of service on the board, respectively.
The election of Matt Bacon to Madbury's seat means that he will resign the at-large seat he currently holds. The board has the duty to appoint someone for the remaining year of Bacon's at-large term; my guess is they will appoint the next-highest vote getter, Renee Beauregard-Bennett from Lee.
Though Madbury's results are still not in, Lee's own Erik Johnson (D) appears to have won the special election for state representative from Lee/Dover/Madbury. Congratulations, Erik! The state house currently leans slightly Republican, but the majority is really determined by who shows up at the legislature on any particular voting day (Fosters, Union Leader).
I'm still on vacation with a terrible Internet connection, so I'm just going to paste the results here (thanks Todd Selig) and finish this post when I get home tomorrow.
[Edit 3/16] It's been a few days. I'll update in my district history in spreadsheet form and calculate percentages. I'm not sure what if anything was the overall issue in this election; let's say inflation.
SCHOOL DISTRICT UNOFFICIAL RESULTS (Durham, Lee, and Madbury Combined Ballots from all three precincts.)
ARTICLE 1:
For Moderator (1 Year) (Vote for not more than one)
Michael Williams - 1525 ELECTED
ARTICLE 2:
For School Board - Lee (3 years) (Vote for not more than one)
Renee Beauregard Bennett - 347 25.6%
Rebecca Blake - 285 21.0%
Brian Cisneros - 726 53.5% ELECTED
For School Board - Durham (3 Years) (Vote for not more than one)
Jason Kolligs - 82 6.1%
Stephanie Pitts - 210 15.6%
Andrea Chan - 142 10.5%
John Colwell - 158 11.7%
Kelly Ickes - 754 56.0% ELECTED
For School Board - Madbury (3 Years) (Vote for not more than one)
Matt Bacon - 369 87.4% ELECTED
Others - 53 12.6%
ARTICLE 3:
Shall the District raise and appropriate as an operating budget, not including appropriations by special warrant article and other appropriations voted separately, the amount set forth on the budget posted with the warrant or as amended by vote of the first session, for the purposes set forth therein, totaling $56,248,037. Should this article be defeated, the operating budget shall be $55,929,305 (Default Budget) which is the same as last year with certain adjustments required by previous action of the District or by law; or the District may hold one special meeting in accordance with RSA 40:1 3, X, and XVI to take up the issue of the revised operating budget only. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)
Note: Fund 10 = $54,415,352 (regular operating budget); Fund 21 = $1,191,685 (expenditures from food service revenues); Fund 22 = $600,000 (expenditures from federal/special revenues); Fund 23 = $41,000 (expenditures from pass through funds).
YES - 1208 74.4% PASSED
NO - 415 23.1%
ARTICLE 4:
Shall the District vote to approve within the provisions of New Hampshire RSA 273-A:3 the cost items included in the collective bargaining agreement reached between the Oyster River Intervention and Tutors Association and the Oyster River School Board which calls for the following increases in salaries and benefits at the current staffing levels:
2024-2025 $139,846.63
2025-2026 $ 35,219.00
2026-2027 $ 18,695.59
and further to raise and appropriate the sum of $139,846.63 for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, such sum representing the additional costs attributable to the increases in salaries and benefits required by the new agreement over those that would be paid at current staffing levels? The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)
YES - 1367 76.9% PASSED
NO - 411 23.1%
ARTICLE 5:
Shall the District vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $125,000 to be added to the Facilities Development, Maintenance, and Replacement Trust which was established in March of 2017.This sum to come from June 30 fund balance available for transfer on July 1. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required) No amounts to be raised from taxation.
YES - 1408 92.3% PASSED
NO - 118 7.7%
ARTICLE 6:
Shall the District establish an Artificial Turf Field Replacement Expendable Trust Fund under the provisions of RSA I98:20-c,for replacing the District's Artificial Athletics Turf Fields, and raise and appropriate up to $125,000 for this purpose with such amount to be funded from the year-end undesignated fund balance, and further, to name the School Board as agents to expend from the Artificial Turf Field Replacement Trust. (Majority vote required)
YES - 1036 59.6% PASSED
NO - 701 40.4%
ARTICLE 7:
Shall the District establish a non-lapsing Athletic Field Revolving Fund in accordance with RSA 194:3-c to be funded by receipts from the use of the District's athletic fields for the purpose of maintaining and replacing the athletic fields. Further to raise and appropriate the sum of one dollar($1.00). Withdrawals from the revolving fund will be made on an annual basis as needed. (Majority vote required)
YES - 1252 72.0% PASSED
NO - 487 28.0%
Total ORCSD votes cast today: 1890
Monday, March 4, 2024
The Race Is On, But You Wouldn't Know It
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[EDIT 3/9] The Candidates Forum on Thursday night implied that Andrea Chan and Rebecca Blake weren't running -- at least they weren't announced as candidates. Watch the forum here; it starts around 56 minutes in. There's also a piece in Fosters.
I'm on vacation, so this will be my only post before election day. Here are last year's voting instructions; no guarantee that they'll apply this year.
Election Day, Tuesday, March 12, 2024
There are contested school board elections on March 12. Vote at your usual polling place; same day registration is available.
The campaigns seem silent; at least I haven't seen any sign of them online or driving around. There's a students' candidate forum scheduled for 6pm, March 7 in the ORHS auditorium. I haven't seen any commitment to making it available online, and there's a very spotty history of timely posting of Candidates Night videos because the district tries to remain at arms length, but hopefully Alex is on it and we'll get to see something before election day. Sometimes the PTOs, the teachers' guild or Oyster River Equity put out voting information; I haven't seen any of that yet, but be on the lookout.
The ORCSD board consists of seven members: four at-large seats and three town-specific seats, one each from Durham, Lee and Madbury. You must reside in the town to hold the town-specific seat, even though voters from all three towns get to vote for or against you. School board terms are three years.
No one asked me this year, so I didn't give anyone my usual free advice for a contested race. I'll give it here for everyone; it's mostly too late for this cycle: (1) buy 100 coroplastic signs with stands, nothing fancy, last name in large, readable letters, (2) make a facebook page and post things to it, (3) maybe team up with another candidate and do a mailer, (4) make a sign with your name on it for Candidates Night, and (5) talk to voters at the transfer stations.
The Candidates
This year it's the three town-specific seats that are up for election. Here are the candidates; I'll feed the names into facebook and link to any school-board specific pages that come up. It looks like Seacoast Online / Portsmouth Herald is doing candidate stories; I've found four so far, all dated February 22, so that may be it. I'll include those links as well. Add to the free advice: (6) when the Portsmouth Herald asks questions, answer them.
Durham:
Andrea Chan (no online candidate information found)
John Colwell (Seacoast Online)
Kelly Ickes (Seacoast Online)
Jason Kolligs (facebook)
Stephanie Pitts (Seacoast Online, facebook)
Lee:
Renee Beauregard-Bennett (no online candidate information found)
Rebecca Blake (no online candidate information found)
Brian Cisneros (Seacoast Online, facebook)
Madbury: No candidate signed up
Of this list, I only know Brian Cisneros. Let's see what information we can gather from publicly available sources. I don't know these people so these are my best guess; it's possible I've found someone else with the same name. Candidates, if you prefer I remove your photo or use a different image or bio, please comment below. I'll try to keep this section unbiased and tell you who I'm voting for at the end.
DURHAM CANDIDATES
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| Andrea Chan |
Andrea Chan appears to be the proprietor of Andrea Chan Photography, specializing in children's photography. I didn't find any additional biographical information on Ms. Chan.
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| John Colwell |
Mr. Colwell has a bachelor of science in chemical engineering, a bachelor of arts in German language, and is an engineer for a battery materials startup. He moved to Durham in 2022, and he has a second grader and a soon to be kindergartener in the district. This is his first time running for any office.
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| Kelly Ickes |
Members are no longer allowed to endorse, but long-time chair and current holder of the Durham seat Tom Newkirk tells me that he served with Ms. Ickes on the superintendent search committee, and that she has kids in the district and has been active in PTO. Tom says her background in educational assessment makes her a "good fit."
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| Jason 'Jabo' Kolligs |
Kudos to Mr. Kolligs, who's gotten it together enough to create a candidate facebook page. He hasn't really posted much on it yet. We don't get a bio, just an image with some emblems and words. From the image we can infer a wife, five kids and a doggie. We also get among his publicly available personal photos a "proud to be a Libertarian." Libertarians / Free Staters were notoriously responsible for the chaos in Croydon’s schools a few year ago.
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Stephanie Pitts |
What would be your top three priorities if you are elected? 1. Ensure quality education is provided for all students, based on scientific principles and proven methods for education content and delivery. 2. Ensure public schools remain truly public and free from bias of politics, religion, or other cultural pressures. 3. Improve/ensure student safety at all educational levels from both internal and external threats (teacher/administrative screening, visitor policies, threats and violence, etc.).
LEE CANDIDATES
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| Renee Beauregard-Bennett |
Dr. Renee Beauregard-Bennett doesn't seem to have created a candidate page, but from her personal facebook page we find out that she's been Assistant Superintendent/Director of Student Services at SAU 16, Exeter Region Cooperative School District, since 2015. That's an excellent credential for a school board member. Before that she lists special education at Dover Area School District.
She's a local: Dover Senior High, UNH Political Science class of 2002, masters from Keene State and a doctorate of Education from New England College.
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| Rebecca Blake |
I didn't find much relevant information about Rebecca Blake; judging from her publicly available facebook photos she has two school-aged children and a nice smile.
[Edit 3/5] I got a message from James Lolano that Ms. Blake is a para at Mast Way who told him she has decided to keep her job rather than seek a board seat. She apparently was unable to withdraw in time to stay off the ballot. I have no reason to doubt Mr. Lolano, and RSA 671:18 indeed says district employees cannot serve on their district's board. I didn't find Ms. Blake listed in the district employee directory, so I cannot verify her district employment. She is or was co-president of the Mast Way PTO.
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| Brian Cisneros |
Brian Cisneros is the incumbent Lee representative; he's served seven years in the seat. His day job is as Business Administrator for SAU 1, ConVal (Contoocook Valley) School District. That's a recent change; he was Business Administrator for SAU 61, Farmington for many years. Brian applied for the ORCSD BA job last year, and appeared to be the front-runner, but the board ultimately chose Amy Ransom.
MADBURY
No one filed to run for Madbury's seat, so the winner will be determined by write in votes. I've been told the plan is to ask folks to write in current at-large school board member Matt Bacon. The plan makes sense.
I think of the district as a seven slice pizza, four for Durham, two for Lee and one for Madbury. That's approximately the ratio of total property values of the towns, and of students from each town. So if we were after some ideal of proportional representation, we'd have four reps from Durham, two from Lee and one from Madbury. We currently have three reps from Madbury on the board, which is a bit lopsided. Basically everyone from Madbury who wants to be on the school board already is. After nine years of service, member Dan Klein is not seeking reelection for the Madbury seat.
The write-in plan rebalances the board a bit. Matt gets elected to the Madbury seat and resigns his at-large seat; the board is then free to appoint someone (presumably not from Madbury) for the remaining year of Matt's at-large term. I suppose it's a good bet the board will pick one of the candidates that didn't win, perhaps from among the second placers. That at-large seat will be on the ballot at the March, 2025 election.
It's very rare that there's some dispute in the district that pits the towns against each other, so the towns of the members and the at-large/town-specific distinction matter very little in practice. The main difference is when an at-large seat is vacated, the school board gets to appoint a replacement to serve until the next election, but when a town-specific seat is vacated, the town gets to choose the replacement.
Who I'm voting for
This is the biased part of the post, where I give my opinion. This year it's pretty uninformed; feel free to stop reading now. I'm away for a week so I'm going to vote absentee in the next day or two if I can.
I don't know who to vote for for the Durham seat.
For Lee, I'm going to vote for Brian Cisneros, who's always done a great job. Dr. Beauregard-Bennett seems like a great candidate as well, and I'd be more inclined to consider her had I seen any effort at campaigning.
For Madbury, of course I'm writing in Matt Bacon.
I'm voting YES on the remaining questions; please see my Guide to the ORCSD 2024 Deliberative Session for a bit more detail on the ballot. I suppose I should report that the warrant was unchanged at deliberate session. Two people thanked me for asking the questions I did, and three others told me I could have asked them at the budget hearing or budget workshop and not bothered the good folks at DS.
A cursory search didn't turn up a Guild or Equity questionnaire or anything from the PTOs; please let me know if I've missed anything and I'll add it here.
[Edit 3/6] Rumor Report
I'm hearing rumors that: Andrea Chan and Rebecca Black want to withdraw but it's too late to get off the ballot. It's only rumors at this point, but sometimes that's all we get. I'm leaving town in a couple of hours, so you all will have to sort this out yourself. Candidates, if you disagree with anything, please comment below and I will incorporate your words.
Monday, February 5, 2024
ORCSD Deliberative Session Tuesday February 6, 2024
Last year I promised myself I wouldn't only post around election time, and yet here we are. I'm not even a district parent anymore, as my boy graduated in June. I'm still the middle school MATHCOUNTS co-coach with Ms. Gehling, and I was the NH state MATHCOUNTS coach this year. On Saturday Oyster River made it into the state MATHCOUNTS finals, which are slated for March 9.
I'm probably like a lot of people and haven't been paying too much attention to the school district lately. Let's take this opportunity to catch up together. There's of course been plenty of news in the intervening year, including a new superintendent who'll start in July. It's after midnight on Monday morning so let's just focus on the immediate future, Tuesday's Deliberative Session. I'll make it easy on myself and just watch and comment on the Budget Hearing video, pasting in screenshots as we go. I'll skip the self-congratulatory introduction, which will just get me angry.
Tax Impact
Most people reading are probably more concerned about their taxes going up than the details of the Deliberative Session and the warrant, so let's start there. We're given two tables:
We calculate the estimated school tax increase in Durham as .40/13.35=3.0%, in Lee as .82/15.32=5.4% and in Madbury as .97/19.20=5.1%.
If you're wondering why your tax bill hurts more in December than July, it's because there's not enough time from the election in March to calculate taxes to be collected in July, so July's bill is always half of the previous year's taxes. Then the December tax bills are calculated to make up the total appropriated by the voters in March, so all the increase lands there.
Deliberative Session Tuesday February 6, 2024, 7pm, Oyster River Middle School
The ORCSD Deliberative Session is Tuesday February 6th, 7pm, at the new ORMS recital hall (1 Coe Dr, Durham) for the second time. It will be Superintendent Morse's last DS as superintendent.
What's a Deliberative Session?
As I always say, the Deliberative Session is a real election where the citizenry gets to amend the budget. It's the vestige of the traditional NH town meeting. Unlike most NH elections, same day registration is usually not available at DS. So you need to be already registered to vote in one of the three towns to be given a voting card at DS. There is no provision for remote voting -- to vote at DS you must attend.
Attendance at DS varies between around 25 voters in bad weather to around 200 voters when there's a controversial issue. It's worth showing up just to keep a small group of renegades from cutting the budget in half, like what happened in Croydon. That's not likely to happen here because the voters can always choose the default budget on election day.
The purpose of the Deliberative Session is to give the voters an opportunity to amend the warrant articles before they're voted on. Some articles, such as negotiated contracts, cannot be amended. Some, like the main budget, can. A majority of voters at DS can change those numbers, overriding the judgement of the board. Then on election day (March 12, 2024), the voters get to vote each possibly amended warrant article up or down.
Each warrant article (except the ones that elect people) is read at DS, then explained by a board member. Voters can then line up at the podium, and when it's your turn you can ask questions that the panel, which includes the board, the superintendent, business administrator, district lawyer, maybe others, will attempt to answer. You're free to make a speech, but if your speech doesn't propose an amendment or comment on an already proposed amendment, you might want to think twice about making it. The safest amendments, in the sense you may be sure they are allowed and will survive a court challenge, are changes to the budget numbers.
Note from by John Parsons, used with permission; thanks John: I'd like to add an observation to this statement you included: "You're free to make a speech, but if your speech doesn't propose an amendment or comment on an already proposed amendment, you might want to think twice about making it." I second that, but I'll be more blunt about it. The moderators at district meeting have generally been patient over the years with speakers veering, usually on purpose, off-topic to make points unrelated to the article/amendment at hand. Technically speaking, all comments are supposed to directly address the specific topic under discussion. Please, everyone, stay on topic. Leave your rants to the 'any other business' portion of the meeting near the end.
The Warrant
The Warrant is the name for the ballot, and Warrant Article is the name for a ballot question. The warrant articles are the subject of the Deliberative Session, so let's go through them.
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YES or NO is a concern for election day in March; at the DS any voter may propose an amendment to change the top line number. They're free to give a speech about what to cut if the amendment is approved, but the board has wide discretion and doesn't have to listen to anything but the number. If the number is lowered below the default budget (which cannot be changed), the usual YES voters could organize a vote NO campaign and then at least get the default budget.
Here we see the board adopted a goal near the high end of its usual increases, which is perhaps expected as they attempt to keep up with the recent inflation. As for expenses, we got a nasty health insurance increase. The 15.1% is a `guaranteed maximum' for budgeting; often the actual number comes in less and the district gets to use the difference as a slush fund. The next five aren't a surprise; these are contracts negotiated in previous years. That includes the middle school bond; the $583K is the first payment of a second bond.
The Utilities number represents actual inflation. The mental health counselor was hired to cover the increasing demand in our post-COVID world. Music teacher Andrea von Oeyen has built Oyster River's strings program into a reported 260 students, which I think means an incredible 12% of Oyster River students are currently getting string instrument lessons through the school. The budget includes an additional strings teacher to share the load.
The two new positions account for $237K of the $319K difference between the default budget and the proposed budget; I don't know about the rest.
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It's getting late so I better move this along. If you haven't seen ORITA before, it's because the Oyster River Intervention and Tutors Association is a new union. I believe they're paraprofessionals, so I'm not sure why they're not part of ORPaSS. We have the usual exasperating lack of context: no indication of how many tutors we're talking about, no report of the associated expenses for total wages, benefits, FICA, etc. We're told the large number this upcoming year is due to the addition of health care for these folks. There's no amending negotiated contracts, but maybe we can get some answers at DS.
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This is the middle school solar array fund. The school has the option to buy the solar array after seven years. This article first appeared in 2021 so this will be the fourth year. It's a good move financially to buy the array, so to that end we put away $125K every year.
The fund balance is the unspent money at the end of the year. The boilerplate `No amounts to be raised from taxation' is misleading. What really happened is this money was already raised from taxation in March, 2023 so doesn't need to be added to the March, 2024 total. Unspent funds that are not diverted by a warrant article like this offset the following year's taxes, so however it's phrased, passing this article extracts an additional $125K from the citizenry.
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This fund is new. The district now owns two turf fields, with the older high school field (built in summer 2016 at a cost of $2.3M) needing major maintenance. The $125K is not a one-time expense; this is expected to be a recurring article that annually puts away what is presumably the estimated annual cost to maintain two turf fields. The life of a field is 10 to 13 years, so I don't think the math works out here; in 13 years we'll have collected $1.625M, not enough for one field, let alone two. Then again, I can imagine the installation costing more the first time than subsequent times.
It was Dr. Bob Barth who back in 2015 successfully worked to get the board to pay an additional $260K for safer, more expensive fill rather than tire crumb for the turf field, citing cancer concerns. Bob sadly passed away in November, 2023. Rest in peace, Bob, you were a model to us all. Bob is survived by his wife, former school board chair Maria Barth, and his children and grandchildren.
Even though it's funded from the fund balance, surprisingly the article is missing the boilerplate about `no amounts...' (at least on this slide). The amount may be amended at DS.
This is yet another fund dedicated to maintaining the fields. This fund is used to park the rent collected from renting out the athletic fields. It's a nice idea, almost certain to pass.
There's not much here to amend at DS; you could change the dollar to a penny, I suppose. My view of these funds is that they almost always contain money that would otherwise be in the pockets of taxpayers. That's true here; without this fund the receipts go into the operating account, where they add to the fund balance and offset next year's taxes. Now that I'm a grumpy old man and no longer a district parent, I'm inclined to believe that the money is better off with taxpayers. But I can see how it makes sense for the district to try to fill some coffers by stashing away unspent money, in order to ease the pain of the shocks that will inevitably occur.
Revenue
This is an ominous warrant, because in addition to a large increase in the operating budget, we see a trend of new warrant articles that aren't one-time expenses, but are intended to be annual appropriations. We see how the warrant asks for money to be added to various funds this year. The warrant doesn't explicitly indicate that the opposite is happening as well: taxes are being lowered by withdrawals from other funds. That gets us to the subject of revenue.
The warrant is about expenses, but of course the taxpayers are on the hook for expenses minus revenue. In the world of municipal accounting, withdrawing savings to pay for expenses counts as revenue, which is a bit of magical thinking. There are some actual revenue increases on this list: the increase in tuition income and in interest income. School Nutrition revenue is a wash with additional School Nutrition expenses. The rest are withdrawals from funds (and retained fund balance, otherwise unspent money this year). These withdrawals achieve a one-time reduction of a recurring cost, so have the effect of shifting some of the tax increase to the following budget year.
It's 3:40 am so this will have to be it. See you all tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Deliberative Session.
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