POLAND — RSU 16’s proposed $17,872,765 budget passed as presented at Monday’s town-meeting style forum.

Efforts to trim it to $17.5 million — an amount that a minority supported because it would keep local property taxes at the same level as they are now — failed by a show-of-hands vote that wasn’t close enough to count.

The budget that was approved is $270,000 lower than the budget that was passed at the May 11 district budget meeting, only to be rejected soundly in the referendum vote a week later.

Taxes will go up if this budget is ratified next week, but the effect, proponents of the $17.8 million budget argued, are bearable — less than a tank of gas, one resident estimated.

School officials estimate that the taxes on a house in Mechanic Falls valued at $100,000 would go up by $13.74; in Minot they would go up $49.66; and in Poland they would go up $20.75.

Poland Selectman Steve Robinson, who offered the amendment to cut the budget an additional $300,000, said he believed the budget could absorb a cut of that amount without causing any program cuts.

School Superintendent Dennis Duquette said that if he had to take an additional $300,000 out of the budget, class sizes would have to go up and he would probably have to cut about $150,000 out of athletics.

Mary Martin, principal at Elm Street School and the Minot Consolidated School, who is retiring this year after 27 years in the system, said that program offerings have shrunk during the past few years of budget cuts.

“We are hanging on, but we are in a precarious position. Future cuts will negatively impact our children,” Martin said.

During the debate that preceded the vote, proponents of the cut warned that passage of a budget that was anything but “flat tax” would be defeated when voters in Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland go to the polls next week.

“This is a ‘lucky-you-have-a-job’ year. I don’t see how staff raises will help our children,” Poland resident George Sanborn said.

“I am afraid you did not hear us loud and clear. Unless you make this a flat budget, we will be voting on this again next month,” Mechanic Falls resident Eriks Petersons said.

There was some confusion on what will happen if voters do reject the budget at next week’s referendum. Some said the district would start the new year with the $17.8 million budget approved at the meeting, while others said the budget reverted to the current fiscal year’s $17.1 million.

Many who appeared to support the reduced amount left the meeting after the test vote on Poland Selectman Steve Robinson’s amendment to cut $300,000 from the regular education account failed and meeting moderator Colleen Quint put the remaining articles through in less than half the time it took for the first.

In the only article with a recorded vote, the measure to appropriate more than the required amount passed by a vote of 115 to 31.

The $17.8 million budget approved now goes to a referendum Tuesday, June 21, at the customary polling places in the three towns.