FREEPORT – After the narrow defeat of a $16.9 million renovation and expansion project of Freeport High School June 11, a public workshop was scheduled for Tuesday, July 9, in Freeport to discuss the possibility of the town withdrawing from Regional School Unit 5.

The meeting took place after the Tri-Town Weekly deadline.

Though no formal petition has been drawn, the workshop, held by the Freeport Town Council, comes in response to the growing frustration surrounding the regional school unit as Freeport voters overwhelmingly supported the renovation, only to have voters in Durham and Pownal, the two other towns of the district, defeat the measure June 11 by a scant 174 votes.

“Freeport entered into this largely based on misinformation and assumptions, including that the high school had enough capacity to hold students from all three towns,” Freeport resident Marianne Doyle told the seven member Freeport Town Council on June 18, just a week after the vote. “These towns (Durham and Pownal) have different histories and expectations surrounding state support for school funding than we do in Freeport. They are consistently paying more than they want and we are getting less.”

According to Freeport Town Manager Peter Joseph, 10 percent of Freeport’s roughly 7,000 residents would have to sign a petition to bring withdrawal to a vote. The process of withdrawing from a Regional School Unit involves a 22-step procedure per the rules governing the now-four-year-old school consolidation system. Most recently, the town of Wiscasset, citing lack of control over school spending, recently sought and received conditional approval to withdraw from Regional School Unit 12.

In 2012, Durham residents voted nearly 3-1 to remain in RSU 5 after exploring the possibility of withdrawing.

The decision to hold the workshop was spurred by a group of residents who asked the council to look at the pros and cons of possibly withdrawing, said Freeport District 2 Councilor Sarah Tracy.

“A town council is the only governing body that can do this,” said Tracy. “The RSU cannot explore its own demise.”

The council will have to decide whether to allocate funds for a study exploring the costs and benefits of withdrawing from the RSU.

“The thought is people can get informed before the actual process begins,” said Tracy.

During a board meeting June 12, the RSU 5 board of directors explored the possibility of bringing the expansion and renovation project back to the public in November. The board commissioned a poll to determine why the initiative failed. For some Freeport residents, the urgency in renovating the school is increasing.

“The RSU is not working,” Freeport resident John Egan told the council on June 18. “We have the capacity here in this town to do something about it. If you have any reason to be in the high school in the morning and try and go down one of those corridors, I’d rather be in Grand Central Station at 7:30 a.m, it’s safer. It’s not just crowded or inconvenient. It’s unsafe and the school is only growing.”

The results on the expansion proposal from Freeport, Durham and Pownal put the total votes on the school project at 2,202 against and 2,028 in favor. In Freeport, 1,623 were in favor, 902 opposed. Pownal trounced the bond, 472 to 118, and it was the same story in Durham, where 828 were against and 287 in favor.

Pownal and Durham voters also rejected the $25.8 million fiscal 2014 budget for RSU 5.