FREEPORT – A divided Town Council and the Freeport Withdrawal Committee will attempt to explain what an independent, 2015-2016 Freeport school budget would look like at the Town Hall on Tuesday night, Sept. 30, at 6:30.

The budget analysis is being done to give residents more information when they vote Nov. 4 on whether to withdraw from Regional School Unit 5. But, like the withdrawal issue itself, the analysis is provoking controversy.

Town officials are studying a model for a 2015-2016 stand-alone Freeport school budget that assumes the same student enrollment at Freeport High School as the previous school year. If Freeport withdraws, it is likely that the student population would drop as some Durham and Pownal children go elsewhere for their education.

Abbe Yacoben, Freeport’s finance director, and Peter Murray, the Withdrawal Committee chairman, huddled last Friday to study budget lines. Yacoben said that numbers wouldn’t be available until sometime this week.

Yacoben has been studying the 2013-2014 RSU 5 budget of $25,855,313, and trying to determine if Freeport taxpayers would be paying more or less if the town leaves RSU 5. She has sent questions to the superintendent’s office for input.

Yacoben said she needs to study technology wages, equipment costs, other salaries, stipends for athletics and much more.

The Town Council, meeting Sept. 16, endured an at-times contentious session on deciding whether the Sept. 30 meeting should present another budget scenario that reflects fewer students at the high school. Rod Regier, a former Town Council chairman, stated early in that meeting that the version under consideration is a “rosy scenario” at maximum enrollment. If enrollment is lesser than projected, Regier said, there’s a problem.

Much later, as councilors debated the budget model, Vice Chairman Kristina Egan and Sarah Tracy tried to convince fellow councilors that Regier was right and that at least one other model was necessary in order for residents to be well informed when they vote on Nov. 4. Following several testy exchanges, however, the Town Council voted 5-2 to begin, at least, with that maximum enrollment model.

Chairman Jim Hendricks asked the council if the version under study indeed represented a “rosy scenario.” He received plenty of response.

“We’re going to have to make some assumptions,” Councilor Rich DeGrandpre said in backing the single budget model. “We’re going to have to make some assumption on staffing levels.”

Withdrawal Committee member Kate Werner, standing in for Chairman Peter Murray, added that a lot of people are going to want different scenarios, and said she was wary of “opening a Pandora’s box.”

Tracy responded that she would like to see at least one estimate reflecting a smaller amount of students. The Regier proposal is to take a Freeport-alone financial projection and reduce the amount of students by a hypothetical number, she said.

Egan added that there was no reason a different scenario couldn’t be discussed that night.

Werner said that it would not be “particularly valuable” to have a proposed budget with fewer students and thus, lower revenues.

Councilor Andy Wellen noted the disagreement among councilors, and suggested that the Withdrawal Committee decide on the figures to be presented on Sept. 30.

Testiness surfaced when Egan disagreed with Wellen, saying that his suggestion to turn the budget deliberations over to the Withdrawal Committee opened up the Town Council to turning the matter over to “advocates” who would be working on the numbers.

Werner spoke about the need to avoid too much speculation, then responded to Egan’s remark, saying that she took “great personal offense” to any suggestion that she would falsify numbers.

Tracy made one last stab at presenting more than one budget model on Sept. 30.

“If (voters) don’t have the numbers they need,” she said, “they will revert back to the status quo. School choice is part of this agreement and certain students will choose not to come to Freeport.”

Egan said that going with the maximum enrollment model would be a “tremendous mistake, and doing a great disservice to voters.”