POLAND — The RSU 16 committee Monday cut $270,000 from its proposed budget and voted to go to next week’s district meeting with one that now stands at $17,872,765.

Two weeks ago voters in Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland rejected the school committee’s first proposal for a 2011-12 budget — which stood at $18.1 million — by a vote of 715 to 436.

The new proposal is clearly a compromise between what the school committee originally sought and the zero increase budget that many who spoke out on Monday wanted.

“You should go with a flat budget. I don’t think this will pass. It is not enough of a cut,” Poland resident George Sanborn said.

Selectmen from Minot and Poland pointed to the long lists of names of people in both towns who are delinquent in paying their taxes.

School committee member Carl Beckett noted that while the proposed budget is higher than the current year’s budget, it still remains considerably below what the three towns were paying for education before consolidation.

“By my calculation the town’s have saved about $4 million,” Beckett said.

The budget for the three towns’ schools in 2008-09 was $19.2 million, the one being proposed is under $17.9 million.

Others noted that the district had saved that amount primarily by cutting some 74 positions and made deep inroads into several programs, most notably music and foreign languages.

“It’s getting watered down,” parent Julie Martin said. “I want a superior educational system for our kids but if we cut and cut and cut we won’t have one.”

Mechanic Falls Budget Committee member Ollie Emery said that people weren’t rejecting the budget out of anger, but rather tomorrow’s uncertainty.

“It’s not anger, it’s fear,” Emery said.

School committee member Mary Ella Jones was among several who pointed out that people’s frustrations with their economic circumstances were being taken out on the schools because that was one area of spending that was right in front of them and it appeared they ought to be able to control at least that.

“But what is causing our economic pain is not the schools,” Jones said.

School officials estimate that the proposed budget, with the $700,000 increase in spending, would increase local property taxes by the following amounts:

The taxes on a property valued at $100,000 in Mechanic Falls would increase by $13.74 a year, a similar house in Minot would have its taxes increase by $49.66, and the $100,000 house in Poland would have its taxes go up by $20.75.

The proposed budget will be debated and voted upon at next Monday’s district budget meeting in a town-meeting-style forum that will be held at 6:30 p.m. on June 13 at the Poland Regional High School. The budget approved at that meeting will then be taken to a referendum vote on June 21.