With millions of dollars in cuts needed after the first round of budget drafts, Town Administrator Derek Sullivan has looked to the schools for budget cuts and proposed a new budgeting technique to better represent the true cost of education to the town.

Last week, Sullivan presented the same two budgets to the Finance Committee as he did to Selectmen. Both budgets account for $57,443,886 in revenues.

The initial "requested amount" budget comes in at $2.2 million over projected revenues. A balanced budget must be presented at Town Meeting. The other budget is balanced by providing the schools with a lump sum to directly pay for things such as health insurance, retirement benefits and general insurances, something that has never been done before in town.

School employee benefits and other school assessments have previously been accounted for on the municipal side of the budget. By moving them to the school lump sum budget line, it better represents the true education costs to the town, according to Sullivan.

The schools have requested $26,400,124 in net school spending for next year while Sullivan's balanced budget draft sets the lump sum spending at $33,680,569. Implicit in that $7 million difference are cuts to the schools that balance the budget.

"Right now we pay about 10 to 12 percent above the minimum net school spending number," Sullivan said. In his priorities for this year's balanced budget, Sullivan said he would like to see school spending at 7.6 percent above the minimum net school spending.

"We know as a community we've been trying to keep it to 'What is legally mandated and what can you legally require?'" he said. "We don't have the minimum for Municipal Maintenance, we don't have the minimum in any other department. We're essentially floundering."

Sullivan said by moving the school costs to a lump sum budget, both the town and the school side can better account for the true cost of employees. He said after massive cuts were made to the schools last year, the school department made nine new hires this year.

"Nobody consulted me and there is no transfer over to the health insurance line," Sullivan said. "How are we going to pay for those? They have no obligation to budget for that."

Finance Committee Chairman Bonnie Cottuli said the school department is surely aware of employee benefits costs, but now they will be more accountable for them.

Another area the town has been carrying school costs is in the county and state assessment budget line. Last year that total was $3,081,049, but that total melts to $259,287 in the balanced budget when the $2.8 million in retired teacher health insurance. School Choice and charter school spending is transferred to the schools lump sum portion of the budget.

With School Choice a growing problem in town, Finance Committee members posed thoughts as to why families are sending their children out of town for school. None of the members felt the quality of the schools was an issue. Sullivan said the number one negative perception about Wareham is crime problems.

"Where do you put your money to stop those issues and that perception?" Sullivan asked. "We have scant resources, but where are they best spent and how do we maximize our return? That's what we really need to figure out."

In Sullivan's balanced budget draft, education would account for 66 percent of the total town budget. Sullivan and members of the Finance Committee will be meeting with the heads of town departments in public meetings on Thursday, Feb. 19 to discuss department budgets.

Sullivan and the Finance Committee plan on meeting with the School Department on a different day to focus solely on the school budget.