WISCASSET — Voters in Regional School Unit 12’s largest town voiced their displeasure with the school district at the ballot box on Tuesday.

The vote on a nonbinding referendum was 917 to 220 in favor of leaving the RSU, according to Selectman David Nichols.

Residents in the town can begin gathering signatures after Jan. 1 to begin the long process of withdrawing from the district.

“You still have two more votes, and at the last vote, that’s when the people are going to find out exactly what it’s going to cost, what it’s going to entail,” said Judith Colby, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen.

Colby proposed the referendum, which she compared to another nonbinding referendum in March, in which 84 percent of voters favored keeping the former Redskins mascot.

Like that vote, this one had no legal impact, but offered Wiscasset residents a voice, Colby said.

“The people in town feel they’ve lost control of their school. They have no say, they feel that the quality of education is getting weaker,” she said. “I don’t think it’s just one thing. We’re paying almost 36 percent (of the district’s local funding), and 70 percent of our tax bill goes to the RSU.”

Wiscasset is providing $4.8 million of the $13.7 million that RSU 12 will collect from its eight towns this year.

RSU 12 Superintendent Greg Potter said the RSU has been good for Wiscasset and that the town would have to come up with $2 million in additional money for the schools if it operated on its own.

“It either is going to be much more expensive to taxpayers or detrimental to programming in Wiscasset, or some combination of both,” he said.

At this point, there is not much that RSU officials can do as they wait to see whether Wiscasset residents start a petition in January.

“We’ll take a look at the results and try to analyze them the best we can and try to be a part of the conversation from there,” Potter said.

Susan McMillan — 621-5645smcmillan@mainetoday.com