BATH — The public will soon have the opportunity to weigh in on the $25.6 million Regional School Unit 1 budget.

The fiscal 2012 spending plan goes to the first of two public votes at a district budget meeting next week.

The meeting will be held Tuesday, May 31, at Bath Middle School at 6 p.m. A budget validation referendum on Tuesday, June 7, will conclude the process of cementing next year’s budget.

If approved by voters from the five RSU 1 communities, next year’s budget will include a 2.5 percent tax hike over the current year – a more than $413,000 increase, to nearly $17 million. The budget itself will increase nearly 3 percent, or about $730,000.

Superintendent William Shuttleworth has attributed the need for higher taxes to a $1.1 million decline in state and federal revenues.

Positions to be cut include a Bath Middle School home economics teacher, four Morse High School teachers; an educational technician job and a Woolwich fourth-grade teaching job (both vacated by retiring employees); a technology integration specialist (a job that may be absorbed elsewhere); a computer technology teacher at the Bath Regional Career and Technical Center; two district-wide elementary foreign language teachers, and two educational technicians.

With a 2.5 percent tax hike, Bath’s contribution will increase 4.36 percent to $8.1 million; Arrowsic’s will climb 4.83 percent to nearly $426,000; West Bath’s, 3.55 percent to $2.6 million, and Woolwich’s, 2.86 percent to $3.1 million.

Phippsburg’s tax burden would decrease 4.24 percent to $2.7 million.

Alex Lear can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 113 or alear@theforecaster.net. Follow him on Twitter: @learics.

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