Question 1: How much money did local schools spend in their vendor checkbooks last year?

 

Portland $69.2 million

Lewiston $49.4 million

Auburn $41.9 million 

 

It’s not a perfect comparison. Portland didn’t include any of their construction costs, probably because they’re funded by the $65 million bond voters approved in 2017. But they did include $38 million of payments into teachers’ pension funds and health insurance, which Lewiston and Auburn did not include.

 

 

Question 2: Let’s talk about Portland first, what expenses stood out?

 

$671,000 for adult ed. Courses like basket making, line dancing. Participants have to pay so it’s not all a sunk cost.

 

$77,400 for staff travel

$432,000 legal services

$6,000 to KOA Consulting for 11 days of “project management”

 

 

Question 3: What about in Lewiston and Auburn?

 

Auburn:

$125,000 at O’Connor GMC Chevy dealer

$12,000 jan miller burkins consulting, reading expert

$6,000 Ann Elise Record Consulting LLC, math

$3,000 Pam Harris Consulting LLC, math

$3,250 Monkey C Monkey Do zipline/”aerial park”

 

Lewiston:

 

$4.8 million to Siemens Industry Inc, provides software and helps manage power grids.

 

Besides Siemens, the next 12 largest checks were for construction companies

 

And the construction costs are likely to continue. I know your station did a story just this week about how the Lewiston school district is running out of space to fit all of their students and still need to pay to renovate a former Central Maine Healthcare they purchased for classroom space.

 

Question 4: Pension investments are one of the largest expenses for the school districts as well, what did the numbers look like there?

 

We know Portland invested $14.7 million last year, an expense of over $2,250 per student.

 

Lewiston and Auburn didn’t include that number in their checkbooks, but data we’ve collected from the state shows that some individual pensions have reached above six figures.

 

Leon Levesque, former superintendent at Lewiston, retired in 2006 and started getting a six-figure pension. Then he was rehired and retired again in 2010, but collected his pension the whole time. Last year it was over $113,000, the second-highest public school pension in Maine. Now has collected over $2 million in 18 years of retirement. 

 

Auburn it’s not quite as high. 42 retirees got pensions over $50,000 last year, the largest one was $78,000.