LEWISTON – A spare 3 percent of registered voters turned out to ratify the $45.7 million school budget Tuesday.

The School Department’s budget, including a $1.5 million overall spending increase, was passed by a 560-142 margin Tuesday. A total 703 people cast ballots in Tuesday’s election – about 3 percent of the city’s registered voters.

“We need good schools, and that’s why I voted,” said Al Landry, 62, of 120 Walnut St. “If we start cutting the school budget, it makes it easier to cut again and then again. I don’t mind paying my taxes to support the schools.”

The vote was a surprise to some, however.

“I voted yes, but I’m not really happy about it,” said Ivan Lazure, 61, of 44 Webber Ave. He didn’t think he had enough information to make an informed decision and said school officials could have done a better job getting the word out.

“It gets right down to it, I don’t think we need this kind of vote anyway,” he said. “If you don’t like the school budget, get rid of your councilors or selectmen or whoever. Just vote them out. That’s what we should do if we don’t like what they’re doing.”

Karen Morris-Arsenault of Bailey Avenue was angry that the city provided just one polling place, in the Multi-Purpose Center. She voted to support the budget, but was afraid low voter turnout would favor the no votes. Voters would have been back at the polls on June 10, voting on a new version of the budget if that had happened.

“What saves more money, getting low voter turnout at one polling place again and again, month after month, or getting a good turnout at three polling places?” she asked. “If they really wanted voters’ input, that’s what they’d do.”

Voters’ frustration and feeling unprepared wasn’t a surprise to school officials, despite their efforts to get the word out. The department mailed a summary sheet explaining the budget to registered Lewiston voters last month.

School Superintendent Leon Levesque said he used the district’s school messenger telephone program Monday to remind parents to vote. That’s an automated telephone dialer programmed to call parents of Lewiston students. The recorded message, from school board Chairman Tom Shannon, went out to about 4,500 homes Monday afternoon and urged them to vote.

“We try to only use the program for special situations,” Levesque said. That includes snow days or emergencies.

“We sent out a flier, we’ve been in numerous news articles, but we wanted to do something more to get the word out,” Levesque said. “It’s just so important to remind people to get out and vote.”

The budget approves more spending, but doesn’t increase property taxes. Lewiston schools are expecting $30.17 million in general purpose aid for K-12 education in 2008-09, a $705,000 increase over this school year. Part of the increase is for English learning language programs, up $215,000 this year.

That’s allowed the schools give $347,441 from the fund balance back to the city in an effort to reduce property taxes.