SUNAPEE — After voters rejected a proposed town budget earlier this month, officials are scrambling to make the nearly $800,000 in cuts required to operate under a default budget.

“It’s going to be very, very, very difficult,” Selectboard Chairwoman Suzanne Gottling said by phone Monday. “We’re going to try to do the fairest and least disruptive things that we can do, but I don’t see how we can’t have disruptions.”

Voters at Town Meeting rejected the proposed $11.03 million budget, 516-494, making Sunapee the only Upper Valley town to reject its budget this year.

The proposed budget would have resulted in an estimated municipal tax rate of $3.08 per $1,000 of property value, a 26% increase.

The Selectboard, according to state statute RSA 40:13, may either accept the default budget, which is the previous year’s operating budget, or hold a special meeting to put a revised budget before voters.

Voters approved a town operating budget of $10.1 million last March.

Gottling, a former state representative for Sullivan County’s Second District, does not think that the board has an appetite for going back to voters a second time. At its March 17 meeting, the Selectboard discussed the possibility but did not make a decision.

“We have to go full steam ahead on living with the default budget, because even with an election, there could be a nay vote,” she said.

The board has called a special meeting for Monday to discuss the budget and the possibility of a second vote on a revised budget.

“I think there will be a decision one way or another” at that meeting, Gottling said of the possible second vote.

Displeasure with the increased tax rate, objections to wage increases for town employees, and the proposed creation of more than a million dollars in capital reserve funds contributed to the “no” votes, according to some residents who opposed the proposed budget and the idea of a second vote.

“Sunapee has been waging war on the taxpayers of this town, and it has to stop,” resident Chris Whitehouse said by phone Monday. “We have a struggling middle class here. This is a poor tax.”

More than 16% of Sunapee’s roughly 3,200 residen ts live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In Sullivan County, the overall rate of poverty is 11%.

The town’s proximity to Lake Sunapee and Mt. Sunapee contributes to a thriving tourist economy and property tax base.

Resident Lisa Hoekstra, who also opposed the proposed budget, said that the Selectboard and town manager have “pandered to the wealthy,” rather than to Sunapee’s full-time residents.

“They are not for the common man,” she said by phone Monday.

Gottling said on Wednesday that “no one on the Board doubts that there are townspeople struggling to make ends meet.”

That the board would consider a second vote also doesn’t sit well with Whitehouse or Hoekstra.

“It’s not illegal,” Whitehouse said, “but it does seem a little bit on the shady side.”

Hoekstra thinks that a second vote would further damage trust and confidence in town leadership that, she said, is already shaky.

“The culture of our government is not fully transparent or honest,” she said. “To try to hit a redo is really disrespectful to the people who voted.”

Town Manager Shannon Martinez did not return requests for comment by deadline.

In a video recording of the March 17 Selectboard meeting, Martinez said that the proposed budget that went before voters at Town Meeting was “bare bones” and that “there is no way to maintain the level of service we have now” under a default budget.

“There are services that are going to go away” she said.

Neither the Selectboard nor the town manager discussed specific cuts at the March 17 meeting.

The Selectboard will hold a special meeting on Monday, March 31 at 6:30 p.m. in the town office meeting room at 23 Edgemont Road in Sunapee to discuss the budget process.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.