The fate of a new school for the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School district will be decided by voters in 16 communities on Tuesday.

Residents in Acton, Arlington, Belmont, Bolton, Boxborough, Carlisle, Concord, Dover, Lancaster, Lexington, Lincoln, Needham, Stow, Sudbury, Wayland, and Weston will head to the polls between noon and 8 p.m. to vote on a plan to borrow funds for a new $145 million Minuteman High School.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority has committed $44 million toward the project as long as the towns vote by Nov. 30 to support the local share.

Votes in all communities will be added together to determine the outcome.

Minuteman Superintendent Edward Bouquillon said the 40-year-old building in Lexington is in need of major repairs and reconfiguration to support Minuteman’s new programs, create an academy structure, and properly educate and train the Commonwealth’s future workforce.

The new structure calls for better integration of technical and academic curriculum with advanced placement and college level courses and dual enrollment, he said.

“We need a school in this region like Minuteman that really supports the innovative economy of the region,’’ Bouquillon said. “We teach the heart and soul, which are the trades, but we also prepare students for careers in robotics, engineering, environmental technology. We have a very well-balanced curriculum that provides training for college and career.’’

But opponents say the cost of attending Minuteman is already too expensive and will only be more so once a new building is constructed.

Belmont resident Ralph Jones, who is the chairman of a group urging residents to vote against the project, said there are too many unanswered questions about the cost and size of the building.

“We have to face the fact that the Minuteman district is broken. It doesn’t work,’’ said Jones, who has served on the town’s School Committee, Finance Committee, and Board of Selectmen. “As far as we’re concerned, this is about debt — it’s not about vocational education.’’

According to figures provided by Minuteman, the new school would cost homeowners in the district anywhere from $25 a year for 30 years to $117. The average cost for Belmont homeowners is projected to be $33 a year, but Jones said the numbers are not set in stone.

Jones said the cost is based on a significant enrollment increase and an assumption that nonmember communities would pay some capital costs.

“If you vote ‘yes’ on this, you’re voting for a debt that could be huge, much larger than anything talked about,’’ Jones said. “We don’t know how high it could go and for a town like ours that has no commercial tax base, that’s a lot of money out of our budget.’’

Minuteman attempted to win support for the project at individual town meetings in the spring but Belmont turned it down.

Under Minuteman’s town meeting approval process, the project could only move forward if there was unanimous approval.

Minuteman’s next step was to call for the districtwide vote.

If a majority of voters support the new school, Bouquillon said construction would start next spring and students would likely be in the new building in the fall of 2020.

Boxborough, Carlisle, Lincoln, Sudbury, Wayland, and Weston voted earlier this year to withdraw from the Minuteman district as of July 1, 2017, but residents in those communities will still vote Tuesday.

If the funding is not approved Tuesday, the state grant will likely be rescinded, said Bouquillon.

And if the district loses state funding, Bouquillon said residents will still have to foot the bill for necessary renovations, which he said could cost up to $100 million.

“We’d be spending the same amount of money to repair this as we would to build a new one,’’ he said.

Even though the votes will be added together to determine the final outcome, any town that votes against the project will have an opportunity to withdraw from the district and not be forced to pay for the new building.

Any town in which the majority of voters reject the borrowing can withdraw from the district by a two-thirds vote at a town meeting within 60 days of the districtwide vote.

Jennifer Fenn Lefferts can be reached at jflefferts@ yahoo.com.