In May 2011, Groton voters rejected a $133 million school building and renovation plan by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

Now town officials have returned with a new plan for the Nov. 8 ballot, this one costing $184 million. That is not a good way to win friends and influence voters, at least not in a positive fashion.

There is much to admire in the effort to present a plan to voters. The School Facilities Task Force worked long and diligently to build consensus about how to approach the new project proposal. The plan makes sense academically while also addressing the problems the town has faced in running afoul of state rules requiring that schools reflect the racial diversity of the communities where they are located.

If approved, Groton would build a new middle school adjacent to the Robert E. Fitch High School, renovate and convert the two existing middle schools into elementary schools and close three of the school system's oldest buildings — Claude Chester, S.B. Butler and Pleasant Valley Elementary schools.

Claude Chester has had the most recent problems with an enrollment that falls short of diversity mandates, but other schools are also in danger of falling over that edge.

Under the plan, a school system that had 10 elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school as recently as 2000, would upon completion in 2020 have six elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

This consolidation will better integrate town schools as well as modernizing them. Four of the six elementary schools would be intra-district magnet schools, further encouraging integrated enrollments. Consolidation should also lower administrative costs.

Locating the single middle school adjacent to Fitch High School would result in operational efficiencies. Educators envision expanded student programming in those middle years and providing easier access to advance courses connected to the high school.

So there is much to like.

The problem is that price tag, about $50 million more than the plan voters overwhelmingly rejected when last asked. Even with the state contributing an estimated $100 million (which still must come from tax money, by the way), the remaining $84 million is a big number. In 2011 the local cost was $66 million.

Using Groton's median home value of $223,800, the project would mean on average an extra $194 annually to pay off the 25-year bonds, on top of other tax increases that come along.

In a vacuum, one could argue that is a reasonable investment to provide a necessary upgrade to town schools. We also recognize that work will have to be done, regardless, because some of the older schools are in such poor condition that they will need major renovations or to be closed and replaced. And advocates are right, delaying construction could raise costs to the town if interest rates rise and state reimbursements shrink.

Yet this vote will not happen in a vacuum.

It will happen in the context of homeowners having been hit with a 3.7 percent town property tax increase this year, after a 4.1 percent hike the prior year. And town officials have warned the pressure of higher costs will continue.

The vote will happen in the context of a local government with redundant and multiple layers and the associated extra costs and taxes they impose, leaving taxpayers frustrated that it never changes.

We urge a "no" vote, which we suspect voters are about to deliver anyway. If that ends up being the case, project advocates should not start from scratch, but work to re-engineer the proposal so that, at the very least, it is no more expensive than the plan rejected in 2011.

Government at all levels in Connecticut must move from the desirable to the affordable. This project strikes us as too ambitious in its asking price given the political and budgetary realities.