Brunswick town councilors quickly and unanimously approved a $54,675,529 spending plan for 2012-13 Thursday night. The vote, after weeks of workshops, approves one of the steepest tax increases for the town in recent years, raising the tax rate by 5.45 percent, or around $258 annually for a home assessed at $200,000.

With District 4 councilor John Perreault absent, the council approved all of the items making up the $54 million figure in 8-0 votes. While one of District 1 councilor David Watson’s palms was in the air for each vote, the other was on his forehead.

“I’m not happy with what we had to do tonight,” Watson said after Thursday’s meeting, “but if we had done anything less, Brunswick’s future would not be as stable as it will be.”

However, final approval of the largest portion of the councilapproved budget still rests with the voters, who will consider a $33,491,029 school budget, 61 percent of proposed town spending, during a June 12 referendum vote.

With approval of that vote, the town’s property tax rate would rise from $23.68 per $1,000 of valuation to $24.97 per $1,000 of valuation.

The vote Thursday locks in the municipal budget, which mostly maintains town services and staff at the current level. One position will be eliminated from the town’s economic development office and an additional $50,000 was added to the budget for management of the train platform at Brunswick Station heading into this fall when the Downeaster train is expected to begin regular service.

Separately, the council also gave unanimous approval to two appropriations totaling $710,250, from both reserves and unassigned general fund balances, to fund capital acquisitions and projects.

Schools

The school board’s requested $33,491,029 figure represents a budget increase of just 0.5 percent over last year’s school budget, but the loss of federal and state funds caused demand for local support to shoot up dramatically. In February, the announcement that Brunswick would receive a cut of $1.2 million in state aid to education came as a surprise to school officials.

In total, Brunswick schools received $2.4 million less in state and federal funds, with the $1.2 million state aid drop a surprise.

Through a series of seven workshops, starting in early March, the school board hashed out a spending plan that cuts six teaching positions, most of which are unfilled, while adding one kindergarten teacher and one math teacher for the first grade.

The school budget also cuts two educational technicians, one bus driver, one custodian, one administrative secretary, and six coaching stipends for assistant coaching positions and freshman tennis coaches at the high school.

After Thursday’s meeting, Superintendent of Schools Paul Perzanoski said that he’s thankful that the budget proposed by the school board has made it through council approval and that he’s looking forward to approval of the budget by voters in June.

That referendum vote will take place Tuesday, June 12 at Brunswick Junior High School — for all districts — with polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Differing opinions

Local blogger Pem Schaeffer voiced disagreements — echoed from a blog post he said councilors “may have seen” — with what he called a teachers’ contract “approved on false pretenses,” which school board Finance Committee chairman Rich Ellis dismissed as an “accusation.”

“I had full understanding of what I was voting for,” Ellis said of the contract approved during an executive session of the school board.

But while Ellis and Schaeffer voiced differing opinions on that contract process, both share similar concerns about how this year’s budget might presage years to come.

“We will have to pay the piper for the reserve (funds) used in this year’s budget,” Schaeffer said.

The town used around $1 million from its $8 million unassigned fund balance in this year’s budget. Use of that money this year will prevent the tax rate from going up 8.45 percent instead of 5.45 percent.

But that can’t last forever. During a May workshop, Town Manager Gary Brown said continuing that reserve fund spending beyond another year would be unwise.

On the school side, a total of $3.4 million in unexpended fund balances were available to use this year, with $700,000 from previous years and $2.7 million from last year. Ellis wrote in an email to The Times Record that continued pruning of the school budget will likely mean carry-over from this year will be less.

For the next year, Ellis projects the end-of-year surplus dropping to between $1 million and $1.5 million — down from the $2.7 million surplus retained this year — while the state aid continues to drop by anywhere from $500,000 to $800,000 over the next two years.

Schaeffer called Thursday for the town and the school board to present these challenges to voters and what they could mean for the tax rate with an outlook for the next five years.

But even for next year, Ellis wrote, estimates of what the surplus might be is “largely speculative.”

dfishell@timesrecord.com