There will be no 13 percent increase in Cape Elizabeth’s school budget next year.

Meeting before Monday night’s Town Council meeting, the Finance Committee voted to recommend town departments stick to budget increases of no more 4.3 percent, and that the local tax rate overall increase by no more than 10 percent.

Finance Committee Chairman James Rowe said the recommended increase is directly tied to the latest consumer price index.

Theoretically, school officials don’t have to whittle their proposed 13.28 percent budget increase down to 4.3 percent, but they would have little chance of getting the budget approved by Town Council if they don’t. Councilors must approve all department budgets, including the schools’.

This year, the school budget will likely have to be approved by town residents as well.

“(The Finance Committee recommendation) means that (the schools) will have a 4.3 percent spending target, and it will be their task to try to get their budget to come in at that level,” Rowe said after the vote.

He said it will be “hard to say” what the effect could be on education.

“I think everybody is going to suffer this year,” he said.

As outlined by school officials last month, at $21.3 million, next year’s proposed school budget would have represented the highest annual percentage increase in Cape Elizabeth history.

But school officials say the budget was misconstrued in the press, either as a “wish list” or as an unrealistic document that the school board would try to force on taxpayers.

Neither is true, school officials say. Instructed to come up with a budget that reflects actual district needs, Superintendent Alan Hawkins said, he did just that. The resulting document included an extra $1.1 million for new staff positions, an $822,000 increase in salaries and benefits for existing staff, and a $132,000 increase for oil, electricity and other energy costs.

“He was instructed to submit a budget that took care of all his school needs,” Rowe said. “That obviously was a list of all the things that they hoped would have happened.”

School officials said the district was facing increasing student behavioral and special education needs, among other pressures. In addition, the Town Council had capped spending increases at 3 percent in 2008, at 3.9 percent in 2007, and at 5.7 percent in 2006.

School officials could not immediately be reached for comment after the council’s vote, but school board members had earlier indicated that they would not be surprised to see the budget trimmed.

“I don’t think there’s a community in Maine that would accept that (a 13 percent increase),” board member Peter Cotter said. “We’ve got a working budget document. It’s by no means finished.”

The proposed budget was “a way for us to know what it is that we’re not doing when we pass a budget (with a) 3 percent (increase),” board member Rebecca Millett said. “What we’ve seen is three years or more of pent-up, or not-addressed, programs and services.”

But, she added, “The budget won’t pass at 13 percent. It won’t happen.”

New staff, salaries, benefits and energy costs would have made up 7.5 percent of the 13.28 percent increase in the proposed budget. The remaining 5.7 percent included technology and classroom equipment, textbooks, staff development, athletic budget, maintenance and field trips.

The School Board will present its budget to the Town Council on March 20, and to the council’s Finance Committee on April 1. After several public meetings, the Finance Committee will review and come up with a final budget adoption on May 27.

If the budget were approved as is, homeowners with a median home value of $250,000 would have seen a 15.8 percent increase in their property taxes, or an increase of $467 on an average tax bill of $2,956.