School Eyes Long-term Maintenance
Written by Dick Broom   
Monday, February 15, 2010 at 2:21 pm

BAR HARBOR — The Mount Desert Island High School trustees have approved a 10-year budget plan that calls for increasing the amount of money available for capital improvements and major maintenance projects from $12,000 next fiscal year to $377,000 in 2020.

The proposed budget for 2010-2011 is $300,000. But $288,000 of that will go to debt service – $200,000 for the 2007 gym renovation and $88,000 for the recently completed roof replacement project. That level of debt service will continue until the gym loan is paid off in 2015.

In the meantime, the trustees said, they need to install new boilers, re-pave parking lots and build up reserves for the next round of roof replacements. To ensure that they will have enough money set aside, the trustees last month voted to ask the four MDI towns for an increase in funding of $25,000 for each of the next five years. That would raise the capital improvement budget in fiscal year 2014-2015 to $400,000. So, instead of having only $12,000 to spend that year after making the $288,000 in debt payments, the trustees would have $112,000.

The long-range budget plan calls for a 3 percent annual increase in funding from 2016 to 2020.

The high school trustees anticipate spending $80,000 – including $48,000 in reserve funds – to replace a 40-year-old boiler in 2011-2012 and $80,000 to replace another old boiler in 2014-2015.

Two parking lots are slated to be repaved in 2015-2016 at an estimated cost of $253,000.

For more education news, pick up a copy of the Mount Desert Islander.

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