What Wiscasset residents do with the school budget on May 14, before it goes to a June town vote, could be pivotal on a number of levels, according to Interim Superintendent Wayne Dorr and Wiscasset Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blagden.

If the May meeting results in a higher budget than the one the school committee proposes, it will stand a bigger chance of rejection at the polls June 10, Blagden said at a workshop April 29. He anticipates more voter participation in the June vote than the May one, when residents can lower or add to each piece of the budget.

“It would certainly impact that final vote where there's no opportunity to change (the budget) back,” Blagden said. “Somehow it just seems like that is a recipe for failure.”

There is that risk, Dorr said. If someone tries to increase the budget, he would be mortified, and he would ask to speak at the meeting, he said.

“We worked hard on this thing, and for someone to say frivolously it's got to be more ... Wiscasset can't stand that this year.”

Or, if the meeting-goers make a large cut to the budget, such as $1 million, that presents its own problems, Dorr said.

“Now you have a horror show on your hands of unbelievable magnitude,” he said. The budget is a difficult one, in part because there was none of the leftover money a school department would normally have from one year to the next, to help offset costs, he said. But he hopes it passes, he said.

Among the potential problems with new cuts is that the town risks having to pay people who lose their jobs, but didn't get 90 days’ notice, Dorr said.

Barring any changes the school committee makes on May 1, and any changes voters make on May 14, the budget will take about $6.9 million in property taxes, Dorr said.

One area where he could still find savings is business office costs, if he gets word from Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) 98 that it will take on those tasks. That could drop the budget by tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

After Dorr left, budget committee members made no decisions on what they will recommend. But Blagden said he wasn't seeing much that could be different from what Dorr presented.

“I think he's done a really good job of trying to work it all out,” member Richard Hanson said.

The school committee is scheduled to adopt the budget offer on Thursday, May 1, sending it on to the May 14 town budget meeting. The panel meets at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Wiscasset High School library.