By a vote of 56-46, voters ordered the village trustees to go back to work and present a lower budget at a future meeting.

The vote was held by paper ballot after the request was made from the floor to not hold the question to a voice vote.

A second annual meeting will need to be warned once the trustees come up with a new spending plan.

The budget the voters turned down Monday showed a 7.25 percent increase in the amount to be raised by taxes.

The trustees actually kept spending down to only 3.45 percent over this year, but revenues were down, and payments on a number of bonds pushed the increase over 7 percent.

This proved to be too much for the voters.

"We need to seriously look at what we can cut," said village resident Paul Reese. "The time has come. We can not keep this up."

Most of the comments at the meeting pointed to the fire and police departments that might be too expensive for a village the size of Bellows Falls to sustain.

The proposed budget the voters turned down Monday was for about $1.74 million.

Payroll, operational expenses and equipment for the Bellows Falls Police Department accounted for about $736,000, more than 42 percent of the entire village budget.

The approximately $285,000 budgeted for the fire department ate up another 16 percent of the budget.

The proposed budget for the fire/police station in fiscal year 2007 was another almost $52,000.

Doug MacPhee was quick to point out that the staff of both departments does a good job and he said the village is being protected.

But MacPhee said, "For a village that is one mile square, we are reaching a point that we cannot afford this. We are pricing ourselves out of our homes."

Municipal Manager Shane O'Keefe introduced the proposed budget by saying that health insurance was up by $26,000, an estimate for upgrading the electrical system at the fire/police station jumped from $45,000 to $60,000, and downturns in the stock market meant losses for the village in its pension funds.

"A lot of these costs are not in our control," O'Keefe said.

The trustees worked on the budget during the past few months, and though they set out to create a level-funded budget, the proposed budget was too high for the voters to accept.

The trustees now are going to have to make some difficult choices. They will not have any extra revenues to consider and the only option, it appears, is cutting staff and services.

The water and sewer funds are paid for by users, while the town of Rockingham maintains the roads.

Clark Barber is running unopposed for village president today, and a new board of trustees will have to get right to work on a new budget that the voters are willing to approve.

Village residents also overwhelmingly authorized the village water department to continue fluoridating the municipal water supply. Residents voted 79-17 to continue adding fluoride to the water.