FARMINGTON — Regional School Unit 9’s board will make another attempt to put together a passable budget Tuesday following voters’ 741-1045 rejection of the previous $32.25 million budget draft on June 9.

The budget meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Forum of the Mt. Blue schools campus. School officials are trying to hammer out a budget before the start of the July 1 fiscal year.

The next proposal the school board presents will be subject to another districtwide referendum vote.

“I want to emphasize that it is our job to put forth a budget that meets the needs of our children,” Superintendent Thomas Ward said in a statement ahead of the June 9 vote. “The school district was put in a ‘no win’ situation when the state increased the educational (tax) rate to towns from 8.1 percent to 8.47 percent. This is the amount the towns have to raise to receive their state allocation. That amount of increase on our towns was not realistic.”

He said that the good news is that when the state budget is passed, “we will all know how much additional money will be added to General Purpose Aid to Education to reduce the educational mill rate to our towns.”

The rejected budget draft was 3.9 percent greater than the current school year’s budget.

Lorna Nichols, Travis Pond and Milton Sinclair, members of the New Sharon Board of Selectmen, had put out a statement calling for a “no” vote before the June 9 referendum.

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