Dear Editor:

Everybody just paid their property tax bills, which is a stark semi-annual reminder about the ever-increasing large portion that goes to funding our expensive local schools.

I hope as you wrote that big check that you thought about these three important upcoming votes:

1. The to-be-announced AOS 98 budget vote has a reported 295% increase for central office staff salaries. Even that board’s chair called administrators’ salary increases “high” and voted against it. Only three of our six local school board members voted for it.

2. The local Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor CSD school budget ballot validation referendum in June may increase our local towns’ assessment by a whopping 18% (nearly $1.7 million, on top of last year’s historically high 15% increase).

3. A referendum on April 24 for a $30 million bond (plus $15 million in potential interest) will ask for an over-the-top parking lot, a fancy new administrative wing, a large maintenance building, and a big, new 7th/8th grade wing for which we will pay 100% of that cost despite the fact that well over 1/3 of those students don’t even live in our towns. The other towns pay absolutely nothing toward the construction costs.

Are you going to vote?

Tom Perkins

Boothbay Harbor