Despite protests from a handful of residents who attended the Northgate School Board meeting Monday evening, the district’s elected officials not only adopted a budget funded by a one-mill property tax increase, but found another $60,000 in additional expenditures to add to the bottom line.

After maintaining for months that cutting educational programs -- including full-day kindergarten -- furloughing teachers and support staff, teacher retirements and activities cuts would allow the district to survive a loss of state educational funding without raising property taxes, the board announced June 13 that it planned to vote June 20 on a budget that would increase millage by one.

Finance committee chairman Daniel O’Keefe said that the tax increase was necessary to build up the district’s reserve fund in order to cover the 2012-13 budget deficit. While the district will have to pull about $140,000 of the current $500,000 fund balance to finance the 2011-12 budget, the following year’s deficit is projected at $700,000, O’Keefe said. He told the board last week that the district would be legally unable to raise taxes enough next year to cover that deficit.

Board member Gary Paladin said the fund balance needed to be over $1 million in case of emergencies.

Residents attending Monday’s meeting, however, saw the tax increase as doing more harm than good.

Julie Treemarchi of Bellevue, a real estate agent, said that Northgate was caught in a vicious circle. Increasing the millage rate makes homes harder to sell, she said, thereby decreasing their value and the amount that can expected from property taxes, and requiring additional tax increases.

She called on officials to come up with a solution or “you need to step down.”

Bellevue resident Jerry Walter said that the tax hike would be counterproductive, with any additional revenue lost because of people moving out of Avalon and Bellevue.

“I’d rather see a program cut than see people keep leaving these towns,” he said. “there’s a huge ripple effect to all of this.”

Lori Lawless of Avalon said that while the populations of Avalon and Bellevue continue to drop, the district has dropped nearly 100 places in state rankings over the past years.

“It’s breaking my heart,” she said.

She also urged the resignation of officials who could not find a way to run the schools successfully and within a reasonable budget.

“Do your job,” she told the board. “We voted you here -- time to do it.”

O’Keefe maintained that if Northgate did not bolster its fund balance, “three years from now we’ll be under state control.”

He said that although some residents were worried about a tax increase, others were willing to pay more taxes in order to maintain programs.

The vote to adopt the $18,717,707 spending plan with a millage rate of 28.6 mills was 6-3, with board president Susan Nolan and members Dave Natale and Shirl Reinhart opposed. Voting in favor of the budget were O’Keefe, Paladin, Marita Bartholomew, Tim Makatura, Tony Barbarino and Shannon Smithey.

Nolan announced that the union representing Northgate’s custodians had met over the weekend and agreed to accept a salary freeze for the coming year. She urged Northgate’s other two collective bargaining units -- including the teachers’ union -- to do the same.

“Be part of the team,” she told them.