Edgecomb voters narrowly approved the purchase of a new tractor for the school during an Oct. 20 special town meeting. Residents voted, 14-12, to finance the purchase of a 2014 John Deere tractor. The town will pay $22,070 in principal and interest over a five-year period.

Voters originally approved the purchase as part of the overall facility and maintenance budget during the May town meeting. The budget included $5,400 for the first year’s payment,  but it didn’t provide a provision committing the town for five years.

Questions about the purchase began in September when the board didn’t sign the loan paperwork. The selectmen wanted more information about the loan because they didn’t remember voting on purchasing a new tractor in May.

After school officials explained why the school needed the tractor, it was later discovered the indebtedness required a town vote. So the board scheduled a special town meeting to decide whether voters would approve the loan.

Last spring, the Edgecomb School Committee had the option to either to finance or purchase the tractor outright.

The school committee opted to finance the purchase at the budget committee’s request. The budget committee wanted to keep the 2014-15 spending flat funded.

School committee chairman Sarah Clifford said the failure to put the loan commitment as a separate question in the warrant was an oversight.

“It was not an intentional omission. It was really one of those things where we had a $2 million budget and lot of things that we put in and taken out,” Clifford said. “We were told to keep the expenses flat. There were a lot of large items like staffing that we spent a lot of time looking at and we didn’t spend a lot of time on the tractor. There was no intent of leaving something like that out.”

Budget Committee member Anita Sprague didn’t recall any discussions last spring about financing a new tractor.

“I understand that money was set aside for maintenance. However, the ... purchasing of a tractor was never brought to our attention,” Sprague said.

Resident Erik Carlson also questioned both the need for a new tractor and why the loan wasn’t clearly defined at last year’s town meeting.

Carlson believed the 2002 John Deere should have lasted longer than 12 years. He believed the money should be put into repairs, not a brand new model.

“I make my living using a 30-year-old piece of equipment that I could rebuild ‘soup to nuts’ for $20,000,” he said. “A fraction of that money could be used to repair almost anything on it.”

The new tractor replaces a 2002 John Deere model that had deteriorated beyond repair, according to school officials. Clifford described the old tractor as being poorly maintained over the years and said it wasn’t able to perform the school’s mowing and snow plowing. The tractor was deemed “unfixable” by the school’s maintenance staff because the front loader and hydraulic systems had rusted into place.