Ogunquit News
Ogunquit's school funding bill alive for another day
By Melissa Wood
AUGUSTA - On Friday, May 4, the Maine Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Committee failed to pass a motion that would have defeated proposed legislation submitted by the town of Ogunquit to change the school funding formula for the Wells-Ogunquit School District.
Instead, members of the committee may consider amending the language of Legislative Document 1123 to read that the towns of Ogunquit and Wells try to come to a solution on their own to their disagreement over the school funding formula.
"It basically directs Wells and Ogunquit to continue to work together and report back next January," said Sen. Peter Bowman, D-Kittery, who represents Ogunquit and serves as chairman of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee.
Bowman sponsored the bill that was submitted to the legislature in December and presented last week.
If passed, the legislation would change the current method for school funding from a two-third property valuation, one-third pupil count to a method that uses one-third for property valuation, two-thirds for pupil count.
Ogunquit currently has between 48 and 52 students in the Wells schools and pays approximately $90,000 per year, per student, to Wells for those children to attend school there.
The bill was submitted by Ogunquit last December and presented to the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee last week.
Town officials were on hand to speak at both the presentation on Tuesday, May 1, and then turned around and went back up to Augusta again on Friday to answer any questions for the committee while they held a workshop on the bill.
At that time a motion was made that the bill "ought not to pass," which means the committee would have recommended against the Legislature passing the bill.
However, a suggestion was made instead that the language in the bill be changed so that the towns are given the opportunity to find a solution instead of being subject to a decision from Augusta.
The committee will likely make a new motion to address the changes to the bill. That must be done soon as the Legislature is only in session until June 20.
Ogunquit Selectman Jon Speers, who attended both the presentation and workshop in Augusta last week, said his perspective as an onlooker to the committee's deliberations was that the committee would prefer the towns work out a solution.
"We've been led to believe that if an agreement is reached that is acceptable to both towns the Legislature would probably bless it," said Speers.
