FAYETTE — Residents rejected spending $6,000 for high-resolution photos of the town’s topography at a special town meeting Tuesday night, at Fayette Central School.

The purchase failed by a vote of 14-13. It would have piggy-backed on a countywide purchase from the Maine Geolibrary Orthoimagery Program, which is looking at updating images of the state, region by region.

While Kennebec County is purchasing 2-foot resolution imagery, the higher-resolution photos would have given Fayette a closer look at itself.

Residents discussed the purchase for more than an hour, Town Manager Mark Robinson said.

“The imagery that the county is paying for, that we’ll have access to, was good enough for the people who voted against the more specific, more accurate imagery that the $6,000 would have purchased,” Robinson said.

Fayette is bordered by Franklin County on the north and Androscoggin County on the west.

Robinson said before the vote that the purchase would give code enforcement officers a better degree of accuracy with regard to buildings in resource protection areas and building potential outside of those areas.

Joseph Young, mapping coordinator with the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s Floodplain Management Program, who is also chairman of the Fayette Board of Selectmen, had advocated the purchase.