LOVELL – Officials in a sprawling western Maine school district were waiting Wednesday for election results that will determine SAD 72’s future budgeting process.

“It largely depends on the results from Brownfield and Denmark,” Superintendent George Cunningham said Wednesday morning. By afternoon, the decision had shifted to the tiny towns of Denmark and Stow.

In balloting Tuesday, district voters were asked if they wanted to adopt a budget validation process approved by the Legislature three years ago.

If the measure carries, it means the district would continue to hold an annual town meeting-style budget hearing and vote. Then, after that vote is taken, district towns would stage a secret ballot referendum to ratify the open meeting’s outcome.

Approval via referendum would put the spending plan in place; rejection would put school directors back on square one, said Cunningham.

Selectmen in Brownfield and Denmark, he said, were most vocal in drumming up support for the so-called validating referendum. Because of that, Cunningham said he expected voters in the two towns to favor the change.

They did in Brownfield by a wide margin, 169 to 76.

Denmark’s vote was yet to be declared. The town office was closed there Wednesday. Ditto for Stow’s municipal office.

Lovell voters endorsed the measure 93 to 87. In Sweden the vote was 38 to 33, and in Stoneham it carried overwhelmingly, 37 to 4.

Fryeburg nixed the issue, the only town known so far to have done so, 243 to 183.

Cunningham said district directors didn’t take an official stand on the referendum issue, but in a straw poll were nearly unanimous in opposing it. Only one director favored the move, he said, while two “were on the fence.” The board consists of more than 20 directors elected by people in member towns.

Cunningham said he personally opposes the validating referendum. He wrote a letter to the editor of a weekly newspaper in Bridgton urging voters to reject the measure, saying the process already works and that voters they shouldn’t “attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken.”