A group of residents filed a lawsuit against the Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor school district after the school Board of Trustees rejected the group’s petition to reconsider and repeal the towns’ votes to allocate $30 million to school repairs, according to The Boothbay Register.
The voters in Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor rejected an $89 million bond for both repairing Boothbay Region Elementary School and building a new high school in November 2023, but passed the $30 million one in April to repair the elementary school. On May 1, a group of 347 Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor residents filed a petition to reconsider and repeal the April vote. The petition also said the residents would support repairing the school if it does not exceed $10,250,300, according to the Register.
The Board of Trustees rejected the petition on May 5 on the grounds that the petition requests a referendum on two articles, which is not authorized by the law, the newspaper reported.
The petitioners filed a lawsuit Wednesday with the Lincoln County Superior Court against the district, claiming their rights were violated, the attorney for the group, Kristin Collins, told the Register.
Collins sent a letter to Superintendent Robert Kahler on June 10, in which she requested the trustees reconsider their positions, the Register reported. She said in the letter that there is no legal requirement that the petition be in any particular format, and corrected information in the affidavits.
Kahler told the newspaper that the district’s lawyers will review the lawsuit and consider next steps. The lawsuit won’t affect the school repair project, he said, because it’s in a high-level organizational planning phase.