LEBANON — City voters will be asked in February to approve a 2.6% increase in the Lebanon School District’s operating budget after officials voted last week to put forward a $43.9 million spending plan for the next school year.

The Lebanon School Board voted, 8-1, on Saturday to approve proposing a roughly $1.1 million budget increase for 2020-21 at the end of a three-hour work session. Board member Richard Milius was the lone dissenting vote.

“I would just urge everyone to look at the optics here,” Milius said in a CATV recording of the meeting. “I don’t think that (the vote) shows a particularly strong willingness on our part to manage our expenses.”

The budget decision comes less than a week after the School Board voted, 7-2, to request $20.4 million from voters for building renovations at the Mount Lebanon, Hanover Street and Lebanon High schools.

If approved by voters, the projects are expected to add 24 cents to Lebanon’s school tax rate. That amounts to a tax increase of $60 next year on properties valued at $250,000.

Milius worried the renovation and budget spending could together face opposition from voters.

However, School Board Chairwoman Wendy Hall argued that much of the budget increase is largely out of board members’ hands. Contractual obligations and federally mandated special-education spending are driving up operating costs, she said.

“It could be significantly worse,” Hall warned the board.

Prior to the budget vote, district officials estimated the spending plan would result in an 87-cent increase in the school tax rate per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.

That increase — which likely was reduced by almost $200,000 in budget decreases during Saturday’s meeting — would amount to almost $218 in new taxes for a property assessed at $250,000.

The budget increases are primarily due to staff salaries, benefits and special education costs, Tim Ball, the school district’s business administrator, wrote in a budget document prepared for the School Board.

The cost to send special education students to out-of-district schools is likely to increase by nearly $644,000 next year.

“This is due to a significant number of students placed by court action since the last approved budget,” Ball wrote.

If approved, the budget would make a few staffing changes.

The spending plan proposes adding a full-time teacher and a paraeducator at the Mount Lebanon School, which is expecting rising enrollments next year. A part-time French teacher at the high school also would be made full-time because of “strong enrollment” in the course, according to the budget document.

Meanwhile, a roughly $666,000 increase in wages and benefits is attributed largely to ongoing contracts with the Lebanon Education Association, Lebanon Administrators Group and Lebanon Secretaries’ Association.

The district’s administration is engaged in contract negotiations with the Lebanon Support Staff, meaning any increases in their wages or salaries would be put forward in a separate warrant article.

District employees not covered by a collective bargaining agreement would see a 2% increase in wages.

Payments to the New Hampshire Retirement System, the state’s pension funding system, will not change next year, Ball wrote in the budget document. Likewise, health care costs will see an increase of less than 1%.

A default budget, which would go into effect if the School Board’s budget is defeated at the polls, will be calculated next month, according to Ball.

“Expect the default budget to be similar to this budget,” he wrote to the School Board.

In the meantime, Lebanon’s City Council also is mulling a municipal budget that would increase the tax rate by 3% in 2010. A vote on that spending plan is expected next month.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.