POLAND — Monday’s unveiling of RSU 16’s proposed $18.1 million budget for 2011-12 found many in the audience of 50 who thought the amount too much and many who found it lacking.

The proposed budget is nearly $1 million more than the current year and includes five new full-time and two part-time positions.

It also, according to school Superintendent Dennis Duquette, has about $250,000 in anticipation of giving pay raises.

“It’s a bad time to talk about an increase in salaries. I am really concerned about higher taxes that some just can’t afford,” state Sen. Lois Snowe-Mello said.

School Committee member Steve Holbrook noted that Minot residents would be hit especially hard. That’s according to estimates of the effect of an extra $530,000 coming from local taxpayers pockets and Minot kicking in an extra $133,000. 

“Minot saw an added $40 increase on a $100,000 house last year. It looks like another $80 more this year,” Holbrook said, pointing out that if projections for a year from now are correct, that amount could more than double.

Steve Robinson, newly elected selectman in Poland, suggested the School Committee should be preparing this year for what he estimated would be at least another $500,000 increase in what local taxpayers would have to come up with.

“Plan for next year,” Robinson advised.

The plan to expand the four-year-old prekindergarten program beyond Mechanic Falls and Poland to the Minot Consolidated School was criticized by some who saw it as taxpayers paying for babysitting. Others thought it might be a good idea if there’s money.

Duquette defended the program, both in terms of its educational effectiveness and in the program’s ability to draw in more state aid money than it cost.

While some grumbled that costs were up as a direct effect of school consolidation, Duquette noted that in 2008-09 the total School Union 29 budget for Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland was $19,240,826.

Some parents noted that the proposed budget still hadn’t put back music and foreign language programs that had been eliminated in recent years.

Another parent called attention to a sixth-grade classroom at the Poland Community School with 25 students and suggested that it might be equitable if the class was split. The parent noted there were a couple of classes at the Minot school with 13 students.

The committee also heard suggestions that might peel off a thousand dollars here and there, for which committee Chairman Dave Griffiths said he was quite grateful and which he promised the School Committee would consider carefully.

“We are listening,” Griffiths said.

The committee will meet Thursday, April 28, at 6:30 p.m. to vote on a budget that it will then take to a public hearing in May.