Voters in Topsham, Harpswell, Bowdoin and Bowdoinham will have to wait a while longer before they cast a ballot on the Mt. Ararat construction project.

The Maine School Administrative District 75 building committee hasn’t decided when the project will go to referendum. However, Lyndon Keck of PDT Architect said it won’t be in November.

Keck was speaking during a forum on the project this week that drew as many as 100 people, many who had questions regarding facets of the developing school design.

The meeting was held in the commons of the existing high school which would eventually be demolished as part of the current plans for the state-funded construction project. The State Board of Education has approved SAD 75’s plan to build a new high school and to use the current site. The school campus consists of 113 acres so no land should need to be acquired for the project.

The project will include a new, two-story school slated to go where the current track is.

The existing building would be demolished and a new competition field within a wider track constructed in its place.

On Wednesday, residents raised concerns about not being able to host sports games during construction.

Residents also asked about parking, maintenance costs, the benefits and dangers of synthetic turf, classroom use and size, the purpose of a proposed forum and whether a third floor had been considered as a cost-saving measure.

“What is it about this design that makes it particularly good for the kind of teaching that’s going to be done in this building over the course of the next 20 or 30 years?” Elizabeth Davis of Harpswell said. “The question about going to a third floor is a really good question.”

Keck said more teacher sharing and co-teaching is expected, so the goal is not to build “silos” that can only be used in one way, but to build so that there is a lot of transparency and an opportunity to easily take down parts of walls. They also aim to have different size classrooms and to create interesting spaces in hallways such as study alcoves where students can work independently and still be close to teachers.

There are $7 million worth of possible additional features or items the district may want to include in the project that will not be funded by the state. While some of the athletic and academic classroom components appeared to draw opposition from some residents, the high building performance items including energy efficient measures garnered a high level of support.

Superintendent Brad Smith stressed costs associated with the project are merely estimates at this point. Using a 20-year bond project in Brewer as a model, Smith provided a range of tax rate increases for typical homes in the four towns in SAD 75 based on the 20 different annual rates. They ranged from as low as $3.65 in Topsham to as high as $6.90 in Bowdoin.

Smith wrote in an email that the district doesn’t know if such a variable rate would be available — or advisable — for its own bond, but it gives people a rough idea of what each million dollars of locally funded projects would cost based upon the typical home value for each town.

Rep. Denise Tepler, D-Topsham, said she is hearing a lot of concern in town about the additional local cost associated with the project.

“If you do end up spending a lot of additional money and putting it on the local share, you are going to have some concerns in getting this passed,” she said.

She has met many new young families in town and also worries that the population estimates for the new high school were developed two or three years ago before Brunswick Landing began to evolve into a place that is really attracting people, and before the Portland housing market skyrocketed.

Keck said after the meeting that there is still no total cost estimate for the project, and it is still unknown how much the state will pay towards the school, since it is still in the design phase.

A referendum on the project will probably be scheduled for some time between January and June 2017, Keck said. A new high school could open for occupancy sometime in 2020, he said.

The public can stay informed about the project by visiting construction.link75.org.

dmoore@timesrecord.com