This year, Westport Island and Alna residents won’t have to head north to hear Regional School Unit 12 officials outline the district’s preliminary, $20.3 million budget. In a departure from past budget seasons, district officials are taking the budget draft around to selectmen’s meetings in all member towns, officials said.

The expanded schedule of public discussions to include all towns is aimed at helping voters be better informed, for both the June budget vote and the district budget meeting that precedes it, Superintendent of Schools Howie Tuttle said.

“We agreed that it would be a good thing,” Westport Island Second Selectman Gerald Bodmer said about the board of selectmen taking the district up on the offer. The budget discussion is set for the Westport Island selectmen’s Monday, April 6 meeting at 7 p.m. at the town office.

District officials will join Alna selectmen at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, at the fire station.

Ralph Hilton, one of Alna’s two representatives to the district board, hopes that residents will turn out to learn about the budget. It’s a bare-bones budget that still keeps the district moving forward with its long range plan for providing the best education possible to its students, Hilton said.

It’s also the last year of a safety net that has limited Alna’s and Westport Island’s savings under the district’s revised funding formula, Hilton said. In the 2016-2017 budget year, the two towns will get the full benefit of the formula, he said.

The district’s proposed next budget is up 3.1 percent from last year’s budget, but the seven towns’ share is up 3.8 percent, due in part to declining state aid, Tuttle said. The district also used $650,000 of its money from Wiscasset in 2014-2015 to offset taxes. The rest of the approximately $1.5 million from Wiscasset was used to help bring the district’s fund balance out of the red, he said.

Under the preliminary budget, Alna would pay $379 less next year, putting its tab at $898,246; Westport Island, $141,119 less, bringing its share to $870,921.

The district’s costs are up by $147,000 for health insurance, due both to rate hikes and a hike in staff enrollment for insurance, according to a budget outline on the district’s website at www.svrsu.org. Tuition is rising by $250,842; salaries, by $180,485; and $67,000 more is needed next year for retirement contributions.

“We’re getting a little bit squeezed by some costs that are beyond our control,” Tuttle said.

The board is expected to consider adopting the budget offer at 6:30 p.m. April 9 at Chelsea Elementary School. That would send the proposal on to the budget meeting at 6:30 p.m. April 19, also at Chelsea Elementary School and a district wide referendum vote in June, Tuttle said.