WINDHAM – The Windham Town Council on Tuesday renewed its pledge and desire to let Windham voters decide the fate of the proposed sewer project in the upcoming November election.

The fall election is expected to see high voter turnout with the presidency, a U.S. Senate seat and a same-sex marriage referendum on the ballot. Councilors say it’s the best time to gauge residents’ views on the sewer system that would remove wastewater from the North Windham commercial district and school complex in Windham Center south along Route 302 to the Portland Water District’s wastewater treatment facility in Westbrook.

Once again, councilors heard from Barry Sheff, the town’s engineering consultant from Woodard & Curran, that sources of money other than users and Windham taxpayers are limited due to budget deficits both federal and at the state level.

“It’s not a great picture,” Sheff said regarding potential sources of revenue for the sewer system, which is expected to cost $38 million.

Sheff said one potential funding source could be state economic development grants, although any amount would pale in comparison to the project’s estimated price tag, which could be off by 50 percent since detailed plans have yet to be drawn and ledge dominates the landscape throughout Windham.

“$500,000 would be a large grant,” Sheff said.

Vice Chairman Matt Noel said any outside money would be appreciated and should be pursued.

“We work hard as a council and finance committee to find relatively small savings anywhere we can so if that is an option, even if it’s relatively small, I think it’s worthwhile,” Noel said, with Sheff agreeing that “small amounts are meaningful.”

Noel also raised a sticky issue regarding Sheff’s inability so far to provide the council with a more refined cost estimate of the project. Noel said he would never go to his boss with a vague project estimate and expect the boss to approve it, and he does not want to do the same with local voters.

“The biggest question that I have,” Noel said, “is I’m still startled … that the accuracy of this project is just wildly large. How can we refine that number and get the accuracy better?”

Sheff said he is in talks with the Portland Water District to better understand the cost of placing pipe from Windham Center to Westbrook and how Windham’s additional effluent would impact the district’s water treatment plant in Westbrook. But the big problem for refining project costs, Sheff said, is not knowing what’s underground.

“There will always be a significant contingency. Until this is advertised and you get public bids, I would be remiss if I didn’t continue to make sure you’re aware that you are in a very early stage and until you advance design,” Sheff said. “It’s really hard, and not fair for me to just close those numbers to make it sound better.”

“Advancing the design,” as Sheff described the process of doing testing to find out what’s in the ground, would likely cost close to $500,000.

“I can’t give you a dollar amount right now … on what that next step would be, but I would say that’s probably a big number,” Sheff said.

After some discussion, councilors determined they would only approve the costly survey, whose purpose would be to narrow the project’s overall estimate, if voters approve the project in November.

“We’re kind of at a point right now where the town of Windham has to decide,” Chairman Scott Hayman said. “And when I say the town, it’s the people who vote. [They] have to decide whether we want to move forward with this project.”

With other councilors in agreement, Noel said the next step in the process is drafting the referendum’s language. The majority of the council would need to approve the wording by Sept. 24, according to the Windham Town Clerk, to add a question to the November ballot, meaning the council has about four meetings, Noel said, to come up with the specific wording.

“I’m all for that. That would be my goal. Let’s find out what the folks want to do,” Hayman said in response to Noel. “I’ve been spinning my wheels on this for three years now…I think we’ve brought this as far as we can as a council and being as frugal as we can with information that will be pertinent years down the line but at some point we need to know whether the people of Windham want to move forward before we spend the big dollars to refine the number.”