Dear Editor:

In a recent letter to the editor, Denise Griffin makes a number of inaccurate and misleading accusations about the financial management of the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor School District and the School Committee itself.

Your readers should know that all of our school budgets must be balanced, by state law. And they are. Contrary to her assertion that the last three school budgets are “likely to be in the red.” They can’t be, and they aren’t.

State law also requires an annual audit of the CSD’s finances. We comply with this law. It sometimes takes a period of months to get the audits complete because they are done by independent companies, and these companies are overbooked with work, so it sometimes takes time to get results. Nothing is being hidden by the CSD, as she implies.

She also praises the Board of Trustees for “hammering the administration for financial information,” while the School Committee remains silent about these questions. This is total baloney. The fact is that the School Committee holds several detailed public meetings about the budget, has the opportunity to go over it line by line, and does so, asking questions of the administration wherever there any questions. She could have attended those and could have let us know her questions.

Finally, she asks, “why is this information (about the audits, about how the budget is handled,) being withheld for so long?” The answer is that it isn’t being withheld from anyone. She must know the answers to her questions are readily available in state law, and by talking with our superintendent or finance director. It appears she has willfully kept herself uninformed, or else perhaps distorted the facts to sow distrust about the management of our schools.

Bruce MacDonald

Member of the School Committee

Boothbay