Voters in the Bangor School District will be faced with two referendum questions on the February ballot. On Dec. 16, the school board unanimously adopted two resolutions to submit to the district’s voters for approval during the Feb. 16 primary election.

The first resolution authorizes the district to exceed the the state’s revenue limit by $350,000 per year for the next three years. That is the same amount of revenue override district taxpayers approved in 2006 for this year.

Given the cutback in state funding and a projected decline in enrollment, the district’s financial advisers have predicted that the school budget will be overrun with red ink if no revenue override is enacted for the next three years.

“Essentially, we’re asking to renew that $350,000 commitment for another three years,” said district Superintendent Roger Foegen. “We realize that these are tough economic times and that, even with that $350,000, the district is going to have to cut expenses further.

“But if the override is not approved we will take an automatic $350,000 hit,” Foegen continued. “Add that to other losses of revenue and we’re probably looking at a deficit next year of $400,000, which would be devastating.”

The other resolution authorizes the district to issue general obligation bonds up to $580,000 to pay for demolishing the bulk of the old high school. The gymnasium, which still gets heavy use by the community, would be preserved.

“The only thing I”m hearing from people now is that they want to save that gym,” Foegen said. “At least half of the $580,000 we’re asking to borrow would be for demolition that we are going to have to do anyway. If you can get a gym for $200,000 when a new one would cost roughly a million dollars, I would call that a pretty good deal.”

In meetings over the past few months, financial consultants have suggested that now might be an ideal time to deal with the problem of what to do with the old high school and gym. Given the present economic climate, bids for the project are likely to be competitive and federal stimulus money is likely to be available at no interest.

That would allow the district to put off repayment until after 2015, when the new middle school/elementary school renovations will have been completely paid for — a strategy that would minimize the impact of the project on taxpayers.

“Because the money would be interest free, there would be no immediate impact on taxpayers if we waited to pay it back until the middle school is paid for,” Foegen said.

He added that he’d like to hold a public meeting in the old school sometime soon so that people could see the condition of the school and gym for themselves.

The board’s next meeting will be Jan. 6. “That will basically be a planning meeting for dissemination of information about the referendum,” Foegen said. “We’ll discuss how many public meetings we’ll have on the referendum and whether we’ll approach it the same way we did the last referendum.”

Three years ago, the board visited the various municipalities — Rockland, the towns of Burns and Bangor, etc — to answer questions. Detailed information was also available in the district’s January newsletter.

By law, the district cannot promote any slant on the referendum; it can only provide information. Board members, however, are allowed to advocate as individuals.