Tomorrow night, at a 6pm joint meeting of the Portsmouth Town Council and School Committee, there is an agenda item for a "Request to Revise the School Department Budget for FY 2008-09," the substance of which is that Town is considering closing their budget gap by effectively taking the School Department's existing fund balance. I would urge supporters of the schools to show up and respectfully suggest the Council not pursue this course of action.

The schools have built into next year's budget this $220K in unexpected money from sources like Medicare reimbursement and insurance refunds (see here) and while the Town is not exactly taking the money, the proposal is to reduce this year's total appropriation by that amount. That, in some ways, is worse, since that decrease will then get rolled forward under the ever-lowering ceiling of the S3050 tax cap.

But the most immediate concern about cutting $200,000 from the budget is the impact on Elmhurst. The proposed budget for next year — which keeps the school open — depends on this money being included. Anyone who followed the budget process knows it took a lot of work to arrive at a balanced budget that allowed for another year with all three elementary schools.

As the letter to the Council from Town Administration notes, with some understatement, "If the School Department plans to use its 6/30/08 fund balance of $217,454 as revenues in its FY 09-10 budget, it may need to make an adjustment." (PDF of the memo here.)

We all know how tight the budgets are this year, and the reduction in state aid to the Town is what's driving this desperate measure. I know this is not something the Council would want to do, but they may find themselves considering it unless enough folks show up to say no. Unfortunately, I have a prior commitment that I can't break. I'll be writing an e-mail to the Council, and if you can't make it to the meeting in person, that couldn't hurt.

Resources:
Town Council e-mail addresses: pmcintyre@portsmouthri.com, hlittle@portsmouthri.com, dcanario@portsmouthri.com, kgleason@portsmouthri.com, khamilton@portsmouthri.com, jplumb@portsmouthri.com, jseveney@portsmouthri.com