POLAND — Regional School Unit 16 officials Wednesday agreed to hold a district budget meeting on Oct. 25 to try once again to pass a budget for the current school year at the same level — $17.8 million — that voters rejected in September.

It will mark the fourth time since May that residents of Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland have attempted to pass a budget under guidelines established in the two-step approval process.

In May, June and September the School Committee successfully argued its case to residents who turned out for the town meeting-style district budget meetings only to see its proposed budgets rejected when they went to validation votes in referendum-style balloting.

Voter reaction to prior budgets was very much on committee members’ minds Wednesday when Chairwoman Mary Ella Jones proposed hiring a music teacher for lower grades rather than hiring a librarian at the high school.

Efforts to hire a replacement for the librarian, who left recently to accept a position in another district, came up empty and Jones proposed that the committee hold off trying to fill the position until next year and use the money, already in the proposed budget, to reinstate a music position for at least the rest of this year.

School Committee member Sue Callahan said that as much as she supported bringing back the music program, such a move would do nothing to bring back public trust.

“We would be seen as back-dooring a position,” Callahan said.

The district budget meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 25, in the Poland Regional High School auditorium.

The referendum vote will be held on Nov. 8, in conjunction with voting on statewide referendum questions dealing with casinos and same-day voter registration.

Poland Selectman Steve Robinson noted that because of differences in election laws governing the school budget referendum vote and the statewide referendum questions, residents who want to cast absentee ballots on the school budget must wait until Oct. 26 to obtain their ballots, even though absentee ballots for the statewide referendum questions are already available.