LISBON

After yet another proposed budget was rejected by voters Tuesday, the Lisbon School Committee will need to give the town council yet another spending plan to vote on and send to referendum.

This will be the third budget validation referendum.

However, the scheduled commitment of taxes later this month will limit the expenditures the council can adopt and put before voters, according to Town Council Chairman Dillon Pesce.

There were 473 opposed and 141 in favor of the school budget proposed by the council at Tuesday’s validation referendum — a total spending plan of $15,052,845 for 2015-16. In a non-binding advisory question, 413 voters opposed to the budget circled “too low” as the reason, compared to 56 who circled “too high.”

Pesce said the council on Tuesday will probably discuss the process it must follow now that another budget has failed at the polls.

Another budget validation referendum may happen in late October.

In the aftermath of a second defeated school budget, Pesce said many townspeople have assumed the Lisbon School Department will operate off last year’s budget. Schools will actually be operating off the budget adopted by the council July 21 — the same one defeated Tuesday — until another budget is legally adopted.

Pesce highlighted the importance of the tax commitment the town expects to do Aug. 25 as it relates to a future school budget vote.

Looking at state statute, Pesce said that if a school budget is not approved by voters when the administration goes to commit taxes, staff is required to use the last budget approved by the council.

That means that any budget voters consider can’t expend more tax money than is included in the budget adopted by the council July 21.

“We have to commit taxes because we don’t have enough money in our cash flow to keep operating government,” Pesce said Wednesday. The council does not want to borrow money to pay its bills.

The school committee will have to go back and look at a budget and send it to the council. If the school committee sends the same budget to the council, the council “won’t necessarily have to have another public hearing,” Pesce said.

If it is a different budget, the council will hold another public hearing, and probably will hold a hearing in either case, he said. Councilors will follow state statute and meet the deadlines to move forward with the next referendum.

School Committee Chairwoman Traci Austin said Wednesday that she had a list of questions she still needed answered. She wants to know why the school budget can’t be increased but can be decreased. Other questions concern the impact on additional revenues. She also asks why the council can’t commit taxes based on the school committee’s initial budget that would have kept taxes flat, and argues there have been times taxes haven’t been committed until September.

“It’s just very frustrating,” Austin said. “I am an official elected to help take care of the school side of things and at this point it’s difficult not to take it personally,” when her expertise and opinions regarding the school department are not considered.

The line was drawn in the sand when the council mandated that the school committee reduce additional local costs by $600,000, which voters have shown they don’t agree with, she said.

“We have this town charter where even when you voice your opinions as tax payers, they’re not followed and there’s no avenue with which to change that, which is, again, part of my frustration,”

Austin said.

Pesce had hoped the council wouldn’t need to schedule the latest referendum before Nov. 3. Pesce said he feels voters associate voting with November and not June or August. Tuesday, out of 6,447 registered voters in Lisbon, “we had a whopping 614 come out to vote,” which was even less than the 1,101 who voted in June, he said.

“I’m sure voter turnout had something to do with this and we need to do a better job with publicizing when we’re going to have a vote,” he said. “These special votes are always run by special interest groups.”

“At the end of the day, it is what it is and we will continue to move forward,” Pesce said.

dmoore@timesrecord.com