DURHAM — It took voters about three-and a-half hours Saturday to work through 49 warrant articles at the annual town meeting during which they shaved $13,000 from the 2012 budget proposed by selectmen.

Adopted was a $2,587,155 budget, which represents a $24,970 increase from 2011. It also represents an $8,000 reduction in revenue that selectmen proposed raising through property taxes.

Whether discussing town employee salaries or maintaining roads, many residents argued Saturday against increasing spending during a still weak economy.

Allan Purinton, a long-time Budget Committee member, told voters the committee had tried to hold the line on expenditures. For Article 4, he made a motion to go with the Budget Committee’s recommendation for salaries and wages for elected and appointed officials and employees. Selectmen’s recommendation includeda3percentincrease for this item.

However, speaking on behalf of himself and not the Budget Committee, Purinton told voters, “Always cutting money is not always the best thing to do, in my opinion. … One of my concerns here with not giving an increase to the employees, that basically ties the hands of the selectmen … By not giving individuals raises, you’re taking away flexibility (from the selectmen) as to what they may want to do in evaluations,” which usually result in raises if employees perform well.

Alice McPeake opined that the town’s employees do a great job, but asked, “Can we afford it in this economy? I like and respect all of these people and if it were a great economy, I’d say give them everything we can afford.”

Selectman Jeffrey Wakeman said the 3 percent increase is not 3 percent across the board. Selectmen settled on the 3 percent increase because it was what employees requested, and selectmen felt it was reasonable. Selectmen received raises last year, but not for the previous three years, he said.

During the past year employees saved the town several hundreds of dollars, according to Wakeman, “so the office is working well together and we’re realizing savings and these are some of the things we looked at when we were looking at presenting a budget.”

Arthur Langley spoke of how he and his wife’s incomes had been affected by the economy, and said, “I have no question the people who work in all levels of government deserve merit. But pay increases is the question. … My philosophy is, ‘deserve,’ ‘need’ and ‘want,’ must come after ‘afford.’”

After discussion closed, moderator Gary Wood asked for show of voting cards, but couldn’t determine a majority vote. He then called for a floor count, which was also too close to call so a written ballot vote was taken.

The Budget Committee’s recommendation failed 55 to 46. The Board of Selectmen’s recommendation for Article 4 passed with a count of 56 to 45.

Voters approved $351,828 for roads after a motion for the selectmen’s recommended $359,828 failed by a count of 57-to-38.

Shawn Bennett, Durham’s interim road commissioner, said drainage correction, maintenance overlay and tree work must be done. He recommended taking money from the roads and the capital road projects lines to do as much of this work as possible.

“Basically in a nutshell, we’re going to be taking care of some of the preliminary work over the next year that would precede major reconstruction projects,” Bennett said. “I don’t feel comfortable tackling a major reconstruction project right now when we don’t have a master plan.”

While work proposed for the current year is under way, “I’ll be working with the Budget Committee to create a plan to take in all the roads comprehensively and bring it to the town hopefully next year, so everybody can see what we have for infrastructure, what the issues are, and the best way to go about addressing them,” Bennett said.

Voters also approved Article 39, giving the go-ahead for the town to conduct a feasibility study on creating a public works department. This study will be done by volunteers at no cost to taxpayers.

Drawing much more debate, Article 30, to raise and appropriate $25,000 for legal fees and related expenses if a majority of voters in a June 12 referendum favor moving forward with plans to withdraw from Regional School Unit 5, passed.

If the June 12 vote supports withdrawal, members would be appointed to a research committee and the town would hire a negotiator. The $25,000 was approved after a motion to spend $0 failed.

Durham shares RSU 5 with Pownal and Freeport. Jane Rice said she is not for or against the RSU at this point, “but I am totally for looking at what my options are. When you get to the point where you sat through these budget meetings and it actually goes to vote and it fails in our town, but then Freeport overrides us, to me, my voting power is taken away and that’s what I feel most disheartened about, I guess.”

Susan Karnes said she is an involved parent of school children in RSU 5, adding “ultimately, our children are the ones who are going to feel the effects of what could potentially come from this. I think the benefits of the infrastructure of our regional school has provided Durham students with services we never had before, such as literacy specialists, gifted and talented coordinators and curriculum coordinators — things that we as a small- town school did not enjoy the luxury of having before. I think as a community — not just Durham residents — but a community of adults supporting the children in our school unit, we owe it to give them the best education possible.”

A total of 111 registered voters attended Saturday’s meeting, which is approximately a 2.8 percent voter turnout.

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