School Committee OKs three budget articles

By Owen Boss

WINCHENDON — The School Committee met at the Murdock Memorial High School conference room Tuesday in an abbreviated session and approved three town meeting warrant articles and the school’s application for a cooperative hockey team. Among the articles passed was the net school spending budget article, which would ask town voters to raise and appropriate the sum of $12,765,821 for the school department for the operating budget of Winchendon Public Schools for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Also on the agenda was the Medicaid reimbursement article, which would ask town voters to appropriate from available funds and or borrow the sum of $45,252 as reimbursement for expenses and revenue generated during fiscal 2007 from the Municipal Medicaid Reimbursement Program to fiscal 2008 School Department budget. The motion passed unanimously. The final warrant article debated at the meeting was that of the student parking fees. This article was raised to see if the town would vote to establish a revolving fund for student parking fees for both the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. The provisions of the article state that the receipts from the student parking permit fees at Murdock Middle High School will be credited to the fund, and the Winchendon public schools will be authorized to expend the fund for establishing and operating parking permit programs and maintenance of the parking lot or a proposed parking lot expansion. The total amount of the fund cannot exceed a total of $20,000. The committee also passed a motion to allow the application for a cooperative hockey team at the high school. The high school would apply along with Athol High School in a cooperative attempt to form a hockey team the schools could not create individually. The contract filed would sign up the team for two years, and would make Murdock the host team. oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 3 on 4/9/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 85)