A year after voters in Pembroke rejected a multi-million dollar budget increase, school leaders now face the real prospect of a repeat of sorts – albeit on a smaller scale – this spring.

Though municipal budget committee representatives said they couldn’t find excess spending in the school board’s proposed budget, the body voted by the slimmest of margins to recommend a $400,000 reduction to the board’s proposal.

“For those people that may not be able to compromise their standard of living much more, they have to decide, ‘What do I stop eating when I go grocery shopping? Where do I get the money when the fuel tank needs to be refilled?’,” budget committee vice chair Gerry Fleury said at a public hearing last week. “And we’re telling them you have to give top priority to paying your taxes. We can’t just turn a blind eye to them.”

The number the budget committee arrived at – $33 million, which would amount to a $1.8 million increase from this year – will serve as the starting point when the town gathers for its annual meeting on March 8. From there, any of the town’s 7,500 residents may propose their own number, which could be both higher or lower.

School board chair Andy Camidge was reticent to discuss the precise impact if the budget passes at $33.0 million or lower, but he acknowledged it would involve eliminating additional positions.

“Those conversations are taking place,” he said. “They’re terrible – we don’t like to have them, but we are.”

The $400,000 proposed reduction that the budget committee arrived at in a 5-4 vote was motivated by an effort to “balance needs versus affordability,” municipal budget committee chair Mark LePage said during the hearing. The committee also proposed reducing the town’s budget by $150,000.

Under the budget committee’s proposal, the school tax rate would rise by an adjusted rate of $1.52 per $1,000 of assessed value, or $608 for a property assessed at $400,000, according to a document prepared by LePage. Under the school board’s proposal, the increase would be $1.84, or $736 for a property assessed at $400,000, a difference of $128 for the year. (Those rates are adjusted to account for the reassessment Pembroke underwent last year.)

In school districts across the state this winter, Pembroke has become an oft-cited cautionary tale.

“If you get a group of organized people to come to a meeting that say, ‘We want to reduce your proposed budget by two, three, four million dollars’ – and it has happened in the state and it has passed – I just encourage the board to have a plan for that,” Boscawen resident Tom LaLiberte warned the Merrimack Valley School Board last month.

Less than a month out from most annual meetings, perhaps no school board has heeded LaLiberte’s advice as much as Pembroke’s itself.

Though there is only so much the board can do to stave off a vote that they argue would further decimate a school district that eliminated 27 positions last year and saw another 25 educators leave of their own volition, school leaders have begun to sound the alarm.

“The word has gotten out that Pembroke is cutting dollars and what that means is that we are losing teachers, and we can no longer attract teachers,” said Kristin Doyle, the co-president of Pembroke teacher’s union and a high school social studies teacher.

The factors that have caused Pembroke’s school budget to increase are much the same as those facing most districts in the state. Employee health insurance premiums increased by 10% and special education programs were projected to rise by 28%.

“A large portion of the costs … are non-discretionary costs: the contracts have already been approved, salaries and benefits, contracted services,” LePage said. “State and federal regulations and mandates have a huge impact.”

Pembroke resident Cynthia Thorell is the type of person the budget committee was thinking about when it decided to recommend a reduction.

A 70-year-old retiree, Thorell was one of the 305 people who rejected the school district’s proposal last year. As last week’s budget hearing got underway, she felt torn about how to vote this year.

“I understand the challenges that everyone are up against,” said Thorell, a self-described supporter of public education. “It’s hard. It really is. But I’m getting screwed here.”

She said the prospect of another $700 tax jump could force her to get a job and cut back on dog treats.

By the end of the meeting, though, she had made up her mind on how to vote next month.

“I’m going to vote for the budget, because like I said, it’s important,” she said. “So I’m going to take a hit for it and it is what it is. … There is a lot that we can’t control.”

Thorell, who took a computer course in high school that led her into a multi-decade career in IT, said she couldn’t bear the thought of the schools losing more programs.

“They cut the STEM program last year which broke my heart,” she said. “I don’t want to see them cut these special programs that are very important for the kids.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.