SCARBOROUGH – Following voter denial last week of Scarborough’s $38.86 million school operating budget, officials are scrambling, both to interpret the results and to craft a new proposal.

Under state law, a new public validation vote must be held no later than 45 days after the initial defeat, May 14, when residents rejected the budget 898-643. Should its budget get voted down a second time, the school department can begin the new fiscal year starting July 1 under the spending plan approved by voters last year until a new budget is finally adopted.

The Town Council Finance Committee was scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to begin debating a new number to bring to voters. Meanwhile, the school board scheduled a special meeting Wednesday evening to hammer out how to make the expected cuts. Both meetings took place after the deadline for the print edition of The Current.

Town Council Chairman Ron Ahlquist said the referendum, in which 60.8 percent of voters deemed the school budget “too high,” was “unambiguous.”

“And that’s especially considering that the school board, you know, they campaigned to have the people vote for the budget but say it was too low,” said Ahlquist. “I guess that didn’t work out too well for them.”

Although not a member of the finance committee, Ahlquist said he expects the committee to shave the school budget to a 3 percent annual increase, a goal originally set by the Town Council in January.

Shortly after that bar was set, Superintendent George Entwistle unveiled a spending plan that included at 10.7 percent spending hike. However, by May 2 that increase was reined in to 4.01 percent, when including the school’s food service budget, with a $623,500 cut by the council.

However, school board member Jackie Perry said reaching the 3 percent number will require a second carving of $390,000.

“Can you imagine what that is going to look like?” she asked in a letter to the editor in this week’s Current. “This deep a reduction means reductions in staff. If I have my way, not one position will be reduced before we reduce funding for sports and activities. Will the parents remain silent?”

Both Entwistle and school board Chairwoman Christine Massengill have bemoaned the sparse turnout, in which school supporters were overwhelmed by, depending on who you ask, senior citizens upset over increased taxes or beachfront residents motivated by last year’s revaluations that raised property values.

Although Town Clerk Tody Justice said turnout for the May 14 vote was a record for any ballot with the school budget as the sole attraction, total traffic amounted to just 10 percent of registered voters.

“I’m very disappointed that 90 percent of the eligible voters didn’t vote,” said Entwistle. “I am really believing that it was a response not so much to the school budget but to just not wanting any more taxes, revaluations that have happened here in town, and other agenda.

“Basically, people can only register that they are not happy with their financial obligations within the town – school, municipal, how the state is moving costs, whatever it is – in one vote, and it happens to be the school vote,” said Entwistle.

“I think they are not necessarily saying no to the school budget, they are saying, ‘We’ve been re-assessed, the state is pushing things down on us, and that shouldn’t all fall to the taxpayer,’” said Massengill.

“Unfortunately, the only place they have to register their dissatisfaction is with the school budget,” she said. “Now, I have to be honest and say this is going to hurt programs and things that we are trying to rebuild. We’re going to end up taking a step back now in what we’re trying to do.”

“You can put a spin on it any way you want, but I certainly heard the voters loud and clear,” said Ahlquist. “Too high, that’s what I heard. We can talk about the people who didn’t come out to vote, but we have to respect the people who did.

“I think the senior citizens have become an active group. I know a lot of them are scared. They’re on fixed incomes and they just cant take increase after increase, year after year after year.”