Budgets and School Property
Special Meeting To Legalize Newfound District Budget
BRISTOL — Superintendent Paul Hoiriis reviewed progress on the Newfound Area School District’s five-year strategic plan during the school board’s June 22 meeting, where members of the public expressed concerns about school consolidation and the fate of the Danbury Elementary School, which will be closing at the end of the month.
Prior to that meeting, the Newfound Area School Board held a hearing on the upcoming special meeting to cure defects in the annual meeting budget process. The single-session meeting to legalize and ratify the actions taken by the district at its January 31 deliberative session and on the March 10 ballot is scheduled for Monday, June 29, at 6:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium.
The errors that the meeting will correct include failing to post the budget, default budget, and warrant articles through the NH Department of Revenue Administration portal by the last Monday in January, as required by law. While the information had been posted to the public on time, the district had not been put it on the official DRA forms.
The other defect was the Newfound Area School District Budget Committee’s failure to recommend a budget, as required by law. The school board had drafted a budget that met the terms of the district’s tax cap, but budget committee members objected to that budget because it would constrain spending that they felt was essential. By law, they could not recommend a higher budget figure because it would violate the citizen-imposed tax cap, so they let the school board’s budget go before voters without their own budget recommendation. The Municipal Budget Act requires voters to act on the budget prepared by the budget committee, rather than that prepared by the school board.
When the issue was brought to the attention of the DRA, Hoiriis said, its attorneys “weren’t sure” about the implications, but said the procedural defects meeting would correct any legal concerns. School District Attorney Barbara Loughman also avoided declaring the budget committee’s actions illegal, saying “that may be arguable,” according to Hoiriis. “Definitely, the board cannot vote down their own budget, but she’s a little doubtful on the budget committee; but she said, at any rate, a procedural defect meeting will correct all defects, whether or not that could be argued or not.”