The Old Rochester Regional district budget can be a wild card for town administrators  when it comes to municipal finances. To avoid being dealt a bad hand in fiscal year 2015, tri-town Selectmen are set to meet with finance and school committee members from all three towns.

This summer, Beacon Hill left the towns guessing what the final school assessment would be. Marion’s bill increased as did Mattapoisett’s – to the tune of $110,000. “It certainly was challenging for all of us…Our assessment went down and Mattapoisett almost picked up the difference,” Rochester Town Administrator Rich LaCamera said. “These hockey puck budgets are driving us all crazy.”

As the towns start planning for fiscal year 2015, local leaders want to take a collaborative approach.

“We are all very concerned about ORR’s budget and want to make sure that if expectations are different than what the towns think it should be we want [district officials] to be aware of that,” LaCamera said.

School officials, following instructions from the state’s Department of Education, crafted a budget working from numbers released by Gov. Deval Patrick. The governor’s budget differed from suggested budgets from the House and Senate.

Mattapoisett Town Administrator Mike Gagne said town officials should reveal municipal revenues to school administrators before budgets are drafted. “We felt that if we were to present that to a meeting of the Boards of Selectmen and the School Committees it would put the issue on the table,” Gagne said.

Superintendent Doug White said he was aware of the Selectmen’s interest to meet jointly, but he had no other information at this time. In the past, Marion Administrator Paul Dawson said town administrators would meet with the superintendent before the district budget was crafted. That practice hasn’t been followed recently, he said.

In another bid to stabilize the process, Selectmen discussed tying their town’s school assessment to how many students each town sends to ORR.

The change requires approval by Town Meetings in the three towns. The current assessment formula was developed years ago, Dawson said. The meeting between tri-town School Committees, Finance Committees, Town Administrators and Selectmen is tentatively set for early December. “Let’s get together put our cards on the table and see what we can work out,” Dawson said.