POLAND — Selectmen poked a hole in a hornet’s nest Tuesday when they refused to sign a warrant calling for a referendum vote on the RSU 16 budget.

“I don’t like signing something I don’t agree with,” Wendy Sanborn, vice chairwoman of the board, said Wednesday.

Sanborn’s stand — and that of three other selectmen who joined her in refusing to sign the warrant — puts in limbo, for a few days at least, the process of setting the 2011-12 budget for Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland schools.

The Regional School Unit 16 School Committee voted Monday to call for a district budget meeting on June 13 to be followed by a referendum paper ballot vote in the three towns on June 21.

While in accord with statutory requirements, this time schedule left little wiggle room. With this delay, school and town officials spent much of the day consulting with lawyers and Maine Department of Education officials on whether the June 21 vote could go forward as planned, without resolve.

The school consolidation law, which established the budget approval process, refers to posting a warrant 14 days prior to the referendum.

“We now know the selectmen were dealing with a mandated item. It isn’t ‘may’ post the warrant; it is ‘shall’ post,” Acting Town Manager Rosemary Roy said.

Sanborn explained her refusal to sign the warrant as “making a statement.”

“I don’t feel we were being listened to,” Sanborn said. “It was a vote of no confidence in the School Committee and the budget it came up with.”

Two weeks ago, voters in the three towns rejected the School Committee’s first proposed budget — which stood at $18.1 million — by a vote of 436-715.

The School Committee on Monday approved cutting that amount by $270,000 — an amount that is not quite half the cut that would be needed to keep local property taxes from going up — after hearing from several who advocated a “flat-tax” budget.

“It was a vote of frustration with the process, the amount, and the school committee leadership,” Selectman Larry Moreau said.

Moreau complained that real input from the public in the the budget’s development was sadly lacking.

“There was no advice from an outside Budget Committee,” Moreau said. “It was isolated within school people; it wasn’t healthy. They just didn’t get it.”

Noting that he had been on the town Budget Committee for 10 years before becoming a selectman, Moreau described the role of the Budget Committee as the “brake” to counter the School Committee’s function of being the “gas pedal” in developing a course with which the community could live.

Selectman Steve Robinson cast the lone vote in favor of signing the warrant, because “that is what the process calls for.”

“I, too, am frustrated with the School Committee for not taking that first vote, the call for no tax increase, to heart. The process really stunk,” Robinson said.

Whatever the opinions of officials in Mechanic Falls and Minot, most signed the warrant for the June 21 referendum, though there was some confusion in Minot.

Town Administrator Arlan Saunders said he was in New Hampshire when he got word to return to the office. He had to find out whether selectmen could sign the warrant outside a regularly advertised meeting.

“Legal counsel said the board could sign, and that it was obligated to sign,” Saunders said.

Mechanic Falls Town Clerk Lisa Palmer said she was aware that the warrant was coming and that she had advised council members, at their Monday meeting, that they should come in on Tuesday to sign it.

“At this point, everyone is holding onto their hats, waiting for the lawyers to sort it out,” Palmer said.

Roy said the Board of Selectmen would meet Thursday in executive session to discuss progress in finding a replacement for Dana Lee, who recently resigned his position as town manager, and that there was a chance the warrant could be signed then.

RSU 16 Business Manager Rick Kusturin indicated that the school system planned to hold the referendum on the 21st, as planned.