The annual budget trimming season is set to start again in Wareham.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan proposed two budget drafts to Selectmen Tuesday night -- one that provided the total requests and priorities of the various departments, and one that provided a balanced budget and administrative priorities to Selectmen.

Regardless of what version of the budget moves forward, cuts will need to be made.

"The budgets requested by the town and school departments outpace available revenues by $2,230,034 and expenses will need to be cut in order to balance the budget," Sullivan said.

The total general fund for next year is projected to be $57,443,886. Sullivan said that revenues are projected to increase by $1,626,629, a 2.83 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. However, non-departmental costs alone, such as medical insurance, retirement contributions and state assessments, are set to increase by $1,723,209.

Sullivan said the state assessments have been increasing dramatically, with school choice in particular accounting for just under a $1 million for students leaving the district this year. State assessments and payments to Upper Cape Cod Tech, where Wareham will be sending 12 new students, will account for nearly half of the non-departmental increases next year.

"We can have a new house built and tax revenue of about $3,000, and if they have three kids and they're sending them elsewhere it's costing us $30,000," Sullivan said, lamenting the realities of school choice.

In the requested budget, the town departments asked for an increase of $1,104,444 and the schools for an increase of $963,331.

Some examples of expenses in the requested budget would be hiring new police personnel, two part-time municipal maintenance workers, additional IT staff and maintaining the library staffing.

The requested budget contains a $611,210 increase for police, a $227,128 increase for municipal maintenance an $83,061 increase for the library. The three departments were hit hard from last year's severe budget cuts.

All told, the total increases would be $3,790,984, a 6.79 percent increase over the previous fiscal year budget.

"As we've already gone over what our new revenues are, clearly that cannot happen," Sullivan said.

The previously mentioned $1,626,629 increase in revenues includes a $1,184,023 increase in real estate and personal property taxes, $94,739 in state aid and $316,000 in local receipts. An expected $136,000 of that total should be coming from the new Marriott hotel.

The balanced budget proposed four main priorities: Public safety, financial accountability, funding the School Department budget at a level that is 7.6 percent higher than the estimated minimum net school spending requirement, and risk management.

The balanced budget maintains a similar amount of spending on the municipal side as the requested budget but changes the way school department spending is accounted for.

Sullivan said the balanced budget would provide the school department with a lump sum budget in which they are required to directly pay for things such as health insurance, retirement benefits and general insurances.

He said in the balanced budget, the total educational spending would be $38,065,993, or 66.26 percent of the budget.

"We are going to have to meet sit down and hash this out because the budget as it sits . . . you can't come in with an unbalanced budget. The state won't allow you. There's a lot of work to do here," said Selectman Alan Slavin.

"It's just a matter of so many needs and so little money," said Selectman Peter Teitelbaum.

"At some point we need the vision of where we're going," said Sullivan. "People are sending their kids out of town for education. We know that we have a substantially larger senior population in the community. Who are we attracting here and how do we get them in here? We need to try and figure out where we go."