Being new makes the Wiscasset School Department a risk for banks to fund the department’s energy upgrades, so the lease-purchase deal will need to run 15 years, not 20, according to the firm planning the project. Tom Seekins of Siemens said the change posed the problem of bigger annual payments, but a workaround is in the works.

Seekins told the Wiscasset School Committee Nov. 17, the Scarborough company and other contractors on the project have cut their markups — shaving the cost by $100,000, from $1.9 million to $1.8 million, but keeping the upgrades the department has sought.

Department officials have looked to an energy project to improve lighting and address other needs they said the buildings have long had; the projects follow state statutes and yield energy savings that help offset project costs, officials have said.

Nothing’s locked in with a bank yet, Seekins said. The committee had been set to take the first of two votes on the project, but instead the panel heard Seekins’ update and was not asked for any vote. Superintendent of Schools Heather Wilmot said she has been working with the department’s legal firm, Drummond Woodsum of Portland, to draft the language for a vote; she said the firm has determined the project’s scope and financing can both be addressed in a single committee vote, not the two first planned for November and December.

No stand-alone town vote is planned, department officials have said; they said the payments will be in each yearly budget that goes to voters.

Also Nov. 17, RHR Smith & Company reviewed a draft version of its audit for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The draft shows an unassigned fund balance of $472,736. Wilmot told the committee it can do as it did last budget season and use $300,000 of it to offset taxes. That figure is three percent of the past year’s budget and departments are barred from taking more than three percent for that purpose, she explained. For the remaining $172,736, Wilmot suggested that during budget talks, the committee consider using $50,000 to bring the contingency or emergency account up to $100,000; and adding $122,736 to the $10,000 in the capital reserve account.

Vice Chairman Glen Craig raised the idea of changing the contingency account’s rules that require a 5-0 vote to tap it. “If someone just doesn’t agree with something, it’s just not going to happen. And I don’t think that’s fair.”

Wilmot called the 5-0 rule on contingency use atypical. “I think it is a wise discussion to engage in,” she said about Craig’s suggestion. The committee took no vote.

In her superintendent’s report, Wilmot told the committee she has put in a request to Network Maine for a discount on communications equipment through its E-Rate program; and she said she’s planning another community survey like last year’s that attracted about 130 respondents who gave their budget priorities.

Wilmot noted that Todd Souza will coach boys middle school basketball, and Wiscasset Elementary School educational technician Alicia Lemar has resigned.

The committee meets next at 6 p.m. Dec. 15 in the Wiscasset Middle High School library.