MANCHESTER — Residents agreed Thursday at Town Meeting to pool town money from multiple accounts to buy a new firetruck, approved a controversial yard sale ordinance, and approved a paving budget expected to go further than anticipated because of low materials costs.

Residents voted down a motion from Selectman Thomas Oliver to reduce the money for paving by $47,000, to about $340,000. Oliver said paving bids came in much lower than anticipated, at $58 a ton, while officials had budgeted based on a price of around $70 a ton, which should save the town about $60,000. He suggested using $40,000 of those savings to reduce taxes.

Town Manager E. Patrick Gilbert said that would save about 15 cents on the tax rate, or about $30 for the owner of a $200,000 home.

Jim Nevins, of the Road Committee, said the town has plenty of roads that need paving and suggested the town use the saved money to do more paving while pavement is cheap.

“There are many more roads we could list to pave,” Nevins said. “We have plenty of room to put that (paving) material, at $12 to $13 less a ton. It means we could probably pave another mile and a half of streets. And if is not used, it’ll roll over to next year.”

Voters overwhelmingly approved the $387,000 proposed summer road maintenance budget, including the full amount requested for paving.

A yard sale ordinance officials said is meant to prevent long-term ongoing yard sales was approved but faced criticism from several residents, especially its requirement residents having a yard sale notify the Town Office before it takes place.

“It doesn’t make sense to me we’d have to notify anybody at the Town Office if we wake up on a Saturday morning and want to have a yard sale,” resident Terri Watson said.

Leon Strout, Planning Board chairman, said if residents don’t like parts of the ordinance, they should come to the Planning Board and amend it. He tried to assure residents town officials would not be actively policing yard sales, and the ordinance simply would give the town the authority to prevent problems such as yard sales that run for much of the year and can be a nuisance to neighbors.

“It is not to try to tell everybody what they could do,” Strout said of the ordinance, which restricts yards sales to a maximum of three days and requires multiple sales by the same resident or at the same location to take place at least 30 days apart. “We tried to keep it as simple as possible so if there is a problem, we could address it. Without this, if there is a problem, we can’t address it.”

Residents also agreed to spend about $360,000 to buy a new firetruck, which officials plan to do by tapping multiple reserve accounts so the truck can be purchased without borrowing money and paying interest.

Robert Gasper, chairman of the selectmen, said the town’s tanker firetruck recently failed, remains inoperable and is beyond repair.

Fire Chief Clarence Cram said the town plans to buy a new pumper tanker truck.

Gasper said tanker trucks cost about $100,000 more than the town had budgeted in anticipation of replacing a less-costly fire engine, so the town had to scramble to come up with the money.

Voters at Town Meeting approved of plans to pay for the firetruck that include using $20,000 from the sand and salt shed reserve account, $517 from the Hammonds Grove fire hydrant reserve account, $2,137 from the green space improvements reserve account, proceeds from the sale of the old firetruck and $30,000 from an account built up from the sale of wood from town land. And they voted to allow selectmen to buy the firetruck from E-One with the pooled funds on top of money already in the firetruck reserve account.

Voters approved all spending items proposed which, together, will make up the town’s budget for the year.

The town budget, at $1.8 million, is the same amount as the current year’s budget. So the town budget approved Thursday is not, by itself expected to change the property tax rate, which is $15.95 for every $1,000 of property value.

However, Manchester’s share of the Regional School Unit 38 budget, which was approved by voters in Tuesday’s elections, is up about $151,000, or 4.2 percent; and its share of the Kennebec County budget is up $16,190, or 5.4 percent, according to Gasper.

He said that means Manchester property taxpayers, barring a change in the town’s total property valuation, probably will get about a 50-cent increase in the tax rate, which would raise it to about $16.45. That would result in the owner of a $100,000 home paying $1,645 in taxes, a $50 increase over the current year. Those amounts do not include the homestead exemption, which allows homeowners to deduct some of the value of their primary residence.

About 50 residents attended the meeting.

One item they didn’t vote on was a pesticides ordinance, which would regulate how pesticides would be used on town-owned properties.

Gilbert said the Conservation Commission worked on the ordinance and held a public hearing about it March 22.

Gilbert said officials overlooked putting the ordinance on the Town Meeting warrant, so it couldn’t be considered Thursday.

He said selectmen plan to take the ordinance up at their June 28 meeting and consider adopting it as a policy — and, next year, to bring it to town voters for approval as an ordinance.

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @kedwardskj

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