SMITHFIELD — One thing missing from Tuesday’s ballot was a $35.2-million school bond issue, which town officials withdrew in August after controversy erupted over how much expansion is needed in town schools.

That means, Schools Supt. Robert M. O’Brien said yesterday, that he is going to have to start over again, and soon.

O’Brien said his first step will be to confer with Town Manager Stanley J. Usovicz Jr. to examine projected enrollment numbers.

“Then we want the Town Council to take a tour of all the schools to see where we are on space issues,” he said.

O’Brien said he has already conducted a tour of the schools for the town’s General Assembly delegation.

After the council tour, he said, he will ask the School Committee to form a new facilities committee that will study the problems and issue a recommendation citing construction of new facilities or expansion of current buildings.

“We are just at the beginning stages,” he said, “so we want to take the council around and look at all the schools so that we are all on the same page. Then we will look at what our long-range needs are. We have to balance between the costs and the long-range needs for the district.”

The School Committee had originally sought $43 million, a figure that was rejected by the Town Council as too expensive. The compromise $35.2-million bond issue was headed for a decision by voters this week, but got derailed after an ad hoc study committee appointed by the Town Council began questioning the projected enrollment numbers that the figure was based on.

The plan had been to close the William Winsor Elementary School, which cannot meet the new state fire code without costly renovations, build a new elementary school off Pleasant View Avenue to absorb the student populations of Winsor and the Anna McCabe Elementary School, construct an addition at the Gallagher Middle School, and renovate McCabe as an early learning center, handling students in kindergarten and first grade.

The ad hoc panel, headed by town resident Al Costantino, then began challenging some of the population projections that the School Department and its own facilities committee had relied upon in estimating how much money was needed to cure the school ills.

Costantino told the council on Aug. 8 that $29 million should do the job, and that the figure might even be cut further. O’Brien agreed with Costantino, saying that the figures he, the School Committee and the facilities committee had relied upon had been faulty. Costantino suggested that the issue be taken off the ballot until the situation could be resolved.

The council however approved the $35.2-million figure, saying it was possible the figure could be revised later, but that the council had to meet a deadline for submitting the legislation at the state level.

Then, on Aug. 21, Costantino stood before the School Committee and declared that $12 million to $15 million was the proper range. He said the projection of school population increases was based in turn on a projection of the number of building permits issued for single-family houses. The true figures, he said, were well below the estimates.

Virginia G. Harnois, chairwoman of the School Committee, criticized the ad hoc committee, saying it had done “a great disservice.” She said the implication was that the School Committee had fiddled with the figures.