NORWAY — The proposed $37.65 million SAD 17 budget will defer major maintenance projects but maintain programs districtwide and add teaching positions, Superintendent Rick Colpitts said at Tuesday night’s budget hearing.

Less than a dozen people attended to hear Colpitts unveil details of the proposed fiscal 2014-15 budget.

During the nearly 90-minute presentation at the Guy E. Rowe School for officials and residents in Norway and Paris, Colpitts said the budget, which is 4.75 percent more than this fiscal year, requires an average 3.99 percent increase in local assessments. It puts the emphasis on instruction and programs, he said.

“We want to put resources in the classroom,” he said. Therefore, the decision was made to add teachers but defer items such as $1 million for school roof repairs.

Colpitts said the budget includes $225,000 for four more teachers to reduce elementary class sizes to 25 students or fewer, $45,000 for a middle and high school technology teacher and $25,000 for a preschool teacher at the Hebron Station School.

The additional personnel not only will help reduce elementary school class sizes, but help to implement a $326,908 second-year payment for additional technology at middle schools in Paris and Oxford, and Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris. The money will also hire a teacher for the implementation of a new preschool class at the Hebron school.

The budget does not include money for nearly $1 million in needed maintenance such as new roofs at the high school and Oxford Elementary School, and paving projects districtwide. It also does not include money for three requested additional buses and nearly $200,000 in other requested departmental needs, Colpitts said.

The expected assessment on district communities has decreased from an estimated 4.5 percent average increase to 3.99 percent. Lower health insurance costs were cited as the reason.

But some town officials said the local costs were hard to absorb when their town’s roads and other infrastructures need to be addressed.

“Somehow, the Legislature doesn’t seem to get it,” Paris Selectman Bob Kirchherr said.

Town Manager David Holt said he believes the pending penalty for not meeting the 100 percent Essential Programs and Services mandate by the state by 2017 should be reduced if SAD 17 is not able to meet it.

Colpitts said he and others went before the Legislature’s Education Committee last year in an attempt to get a waiver from the full funding mandate, but their proposal was shot down. Now, he said, the only hope is that a new bill will be introduced in the next legislative session. He urged officials from both towns to put their concerns in writing and submit a bill.

Oxford Hills Technical School Director Shawn Lambert also unveiled his proposed fiscal 2014-15 budget of $3,756,732 at Tuesday’s hearing. It’s 2.31 percent more than this fiscal year.

The budget includes an increase for repair of equipment, negotiated salaries of administrators and teachers and a 5 percent health insurance increase.

Unlike SAD 17, the technical school is not under the mandates of EPS funding.

Also Tuesday night, Assistant Superintendent Patrick Hartnett and Business Manager Cathy Fanjoy Coffey presented the budget to town officials and residents of Oxford and Otisfield at the Oxford Elementary School.

Budget hearings continue Wednesday, April 16, at Harrison Elementary School for Harrison and Waterford residents and Thursday, April 17, at Hebron Station School for Hebron and West Paris residents.

Both meetings begin at 7 p.m. The meetings are open to anyone to attend regardless of residency.

The Budget Committee will meet April 30 to finalize the spending plan. It will the be presented to the school board May 5 for adoption.

District voters will act on it at 7 p.m. June 5 in the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Forum in Paris. The budget validation referendum in all eight towns is set for June 10.

ldixon@sunjournal.com