Tiverton has clearly outgrown its town meeting. It served the town well generations ago but is scarcely up to the challenges of $40 million budgets, binding contracts and state mandates.

Sadly, there’s reason to doubt that the financial town referendum (FTR), concocted as a town meeting substitute, will make matters better.

Tempting as it may be to vote for a town meeting replacement — any replacement — this unproven option changes the voting venue and method but does not necessarily end the rancor, confusion and post-vote lawsuits that are now the norm. If anything, it offers new opportunities for mayhem.

FTR architects have timed their bid well. Frustration with town meeting, tax hikes, sweet contracts and a miserable economy has left voters in a sour mood. But there are things taxpayers should ponder before taking this leap of faith.

Allowing residents to toss their own budgets into the ring with but 50 signatures of support adds layers of turmoil that Tiverton can only begin to imagine.

Since most of these spending “plans” will be short on detail (their authors need not even attend the hearing to explain them), voters will be left to sift through it all. Will plan #4 preserve school sports, provide cash for pothole repairs? Does #5 keep the senior center afloat. Is #3 even legal? Isn’t #2 way over the cap? Are budgets 7 and 8 serious or mere throwaway attempts to divide and conquer?

It’s too much to expect of any one hearing to make sense of this dizzying array of numbers which means that voters, few of whom have much experience in the complexities of multi-million dollar budgeting, will have little to guide them. The present system is just as flawed — audience members tossing amendments out of left field — but it’s time to grow beyond that sort of budgeting.

All of which is why towns typically leave the number crunching to people with the expertise and time to make sense of it all. Portsmouth, Bristol and other neighbors abandoned their town meetings long ago and now rely on town councils, backed by finance committees or departments, to craft their budgets. If voters don’t like the results, they can vote in leaders they think will do better.

With all the time-proven methods available to set municipal budgets, why must Tiverton venture onto uncharted waters? Given what’s at stake, it would be helpful to see how this specific FTR model has worked in some other place but no such example has been offered.

Through all the talk of quick and easy voting, the FTR smacks of a solution with a singular outcome in mind — lower taxes. The resumes of its authors suggest this and the pro-FTR signs proclaim it.

It is long past time for Tiverton to ditch its town meeting tradition, but the town can do better than this untested FTR with its scattershot budget barrage.