SAUGUS – Following presentations from key department heads Wednesday, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to send a $76 million preliminary budget for fiscal 2012 to the Finance Committee for further scrutiny.Of that, $66 million is for town expenses, including the $25 million school budget. The remaining $9.8 million is for the town’s water-and-sewer enterprise fund.One refrain dominated the evening proceedings at Town Hall ? there’s not enough money to fund the current level of services.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani said the town must find other sources of revenue or face the reality of layoffs and departmental budget cuts.Several reductions already have been proposed, he said, citing police and fire overtime and training, vocational school expenses, emergency dispatching services, and costs associated with the Highway Department. The reductions, outlined in the March 1 version of the budget, were subtracted from the amounts recommended in the original Feb. 1 budget given to selectmen.Specifically, the reductions were $160,000 from the police overtime account; $50,000 from police training; $150,000 from fire overtime; $20,000 from dispatching; $47,000 from highway; and $250,000 through changes in the town’s group health plan.In all, the cuts total $817,000 less than the original proposed budget, but aren’t deep enough to maintain the status quo.”The reductions shown are from what the original recommendations were,” said Bisignani. “We’re looking for ways to raise revenue. If we don’t get additional revenue of some sort, there’s going to be a reduction in services.”The town manager explained, for example, that the Police Department proposed $650,000 for its overtime budget, but it was trimmed to $500,000. Police Chief Domenic DiMella said the cut would cripple his department.DiMella said Saugus for the past several years has chosen to staff its Police Department by providing overtime to its present number of patrolmen rather than hire additional ones because the practice was deemed more cost-effective. Taking away that overtime will leave less police on the streets, he said.”It’s going to affect the safety of the community and the safety of my men,” he said.DiMella offered as comparison the police overtime budgets of other communities. Saugus police asked for $650,000, just as Gloucester sought $690,000; Andover $940,000; and Beverly $600,000.As for cuts to training funds, DiMella said police must comply with more state-mandated trainings than ever before.Fire Chief James Blanchard offered a similar view. Budget cuts will force the closure of the Essex Street firehouse. He noted that Saugus operates its fire apparatus with less men than the minimum sanctioned by national fire safety organizations.Blanchard said the town budget process unfairly pits one department against another. He used the analogy of a lifeboat with six people, in which there is only room enough for two.Richard Barry, chairman of the Council on Aging, said the Town Hall seemed filled with “an air of gloom.” Saugus has approximately 7,000 senior citizens, many of whom have medical problems, he said.”We have become almost a medical center at the Senior Center,” he said. “We find ourselves dealing with children who don’t know what to do with their parents. We do lots of education. We do more and more for our seniors. If we lose the Senior Center, it’ll be a tragedy.”Greg Nicholas, who oversees the town’s youth programs, said budgets for school, police and fire are tied directly to how the town provides services to its youth. After all, Saugus has been singled out as a place where youths engage in high-risk behaviors at a rate greater than most other communities in Massachusetts, he said.Deputy Assessor Ronald Keohan told the board that in the past three years, Saugus has lost 25 percent of its real estate value. He also noted that 98 percent of the money used to run the town comes from taxation on those properties.School Superintendent Richard Langlois as