CHINA -- The state-mandated open town meeting to vote on the 2008-09 school budget request will be at 9 a.m. May 31 at the China Middle School multipurpose room.

That was the only decision from a two-hour joint meeting of the School and Budget committees and selectmen Wednesday evening.

Budgeteers and selectmen were too busy learning about the new budget format and schedule to get into details of planned school expenditures.

Budget Committee member Paul MacDonald tried to ask about specific items, but other participants asked him to defer his questions while Gary Smith, School Union 52 Director of Business and Assistant Superintendent, gave them the overview.

Selectmen have an opportunity to make their recommendation on the budget request at their May 12 meeting. A Budget Committee meeting is to be scheduled.

The main procedural points Smith made are:

* After electing a town meeting moderator, voters will act on 14 school budget articles. Those include 11 expenditure categories; an article to raise $2.1 million in local matching funds required to get state funding; an article to raise almost $889,000 in additional local funds, which must be by written ballot at the open meeting; and a final article to authorize the School Committee to spend the entire $7.776 million budget.

* Voters can amend any of the proposed amounts at the open meeting.

* The total budget approved at the open meeting is then submitted to a June 10 referendum vote. Voters on June 10 will answer yes or no to a single question: Do they approve the budget that May 31 voters approved?

* If the budget is rejected June 10, the process starts over and the two-meeting cycle is repeated until a new budget is approved.

Until the new state law took effect, China had a local ordinance that said if the proposed budget failed twice, the previous year's budget remained in effect.

Smith said he believes the state law replaces all of China's ordinance, but said he would find out whether what residents call the "two-strikes law" is still valid.

If it is, he said, after two defeats "Carl [Gartley, China principal] gets a 2 percent increase in his budget," because the proposed budget is 2 percent lower than the current year's total.

Despite the decrease of more than $160,000 in the total budget, local funding will go up by more than $240,000, because state and federal revenues will be lower, Smith said.