Staff Writer

Three possible outcomes for debt sharing in RSU 21 encompassing Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Arundel, are being weighed by members of the former reorganization planning committee and school board to correct a problem in the district charter. 

Some members of the committee believe the debt service section of the charter was described incorrectly to the public.

The finance committee in April discovered the section of the district’s charter that deals with local and state debt is not what some committee members understood at the time.

Kennebunk and Kennebunkport – through the former MSAD 71 – have debt of about $27 million from building Middle School of the Kennebunks and Kennebunk Elementary School.

How that debt is allocated affects how much taxes residents pay in each town. 

Kennebunk is required by state law and district charter to pay nearly 80 percent or 1.3 million of the annual debt service in the current and next fiscal year – more than $300,000 more than some committee members who wrote the charter believe was intended.

When RSU 21 was being formed, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport decided to continue to share its debt without involving Arundel.

“This is a Kennebunk and Kennebunkport issue that hasn’t been resolved in 20 years,” said Dana Peck, former co-chairman of the committee and an Arundel selectman.

Some members of the committee feel the debt service charter was supposed to split former MSAD 71 debt by a combination of pupil count and tax assessment.

However, during the charter process the words “local only” were added into the debt section, negating the split some thought was previously approved.

As written, only the local portion of the district debt is split by pupil count and tax assessment, with 30 percent based on pupil count and 70 percent based on tax assessment, Dolloff said.

This means Kennebunk pays 63.73 percent of the debt and Kennebunkport pays the remaining 36.27 percent. Local-only debt is paid from local district funds raised from taxes and other revenue.

State-allocated debt, which funds state-approved school construction, is divided in the charter solely on pupil count. Kennebunk is responsible for 79.56 percent of the state debt and Kennebunkport picks up the remaining 20.44 percent.

Some members of the committee believed state-allocated debt should be handled the same as local debt – split between pupil count and tax assessment.

Trying to reinstitute the split may be illegal. State law now mandates state-allocated debt be split only by pupil count. This resulted in what some believe to be an unfair shift of approximately $324,000 from Kennebunkport to Kennebunk because Kennebunkport has fewer students in the district.

Some members of the committee and Kennebunkport Town Manager Larry Mead said they never saw a copy of the final edited charter, which was approved in October 2008.

School board member Gayle Spofford from Kennebunk, also a member of the committee, said she was one of two people who would not sign the final charter and believes she was misled by an interpretation of “local only.”

School board member John Sharood of Kennebunk said he remembered part of the reason for the split was an agreement by the three towns to keep one school open in each town.

Without closing a school, the district pays for extra space and extra costs and the split was chosen to make the charter financially acceptable to Kennebunk voters. Sharood said.

School board chairman Maureen King said members of the committee had a short time to finalize the new charter in time to be included on the November 2008 ballot.

 “There were several of us writing and several of us editing,” King said. “We had six rejections in six weeks.”

On May 17, some members of the committee met to discuss the original charter’s intent on dealing with debt.  Norm Archer, a school board member from Kennebunkport, said the meeting did not bring a “collective forehead smack” of understanding.

Andrew Dolloff and district legal counsel, Bryan Dench, of the Auburn law firm Skelton Taintor & Abbott, discussed possible solutions.

Three options currently on the table are to do nothing and keep the charter as it stands; request special legislation to change the charter; or change the cost-sharing plan in other areas of the budget to offset the $324,000 difference in debt service allocations, although that change must be approved through referendum by a two-thirds majority of voters.

According to Jim Reir, department of education director of finance and operations, most school districts in the state have a procedure to change cost-sharing plans.

Reir said the plan can be changed in any way that does not violate the state law that mandates how state-allocated debt is split.  He has not heard of any district that has sought special legislation to change that formula. 

“It is my experience that (legislators) don’t like to get involved in strictly community issues,” said Rep. Ed Legg (D-Kennebunk).  He told the committee about another district that asked legislators to intervene on an issue. “They said ‘go back, go into arbitration and work it out yourself.’”

“It seems only fair and only logical for the committee to get the band back together and make a deal that’s clear and acceptable for the rest of the district,” Archer said.

Dan Boothby, a former selectman from Kennebunk said the state-allocated debt law was forced on the towns and “pits neighbor against neighbor.”

The committee and school board will continue to meet until a decision can be negotiated for the charter.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.