Residents’ questions, articles’ wide passages and the moderator’s humor marked Alna's special town meeting Wednesday night that approved borrowing up to $260,000 to replace the town office and applying about $312,000 to offset taxes.

Voters also changed a series of rules in the building code and subdivision ordinances.

About two dozen residents took part at the 1789 Alna Meetinghouse, then broke into conversations in the aisle and on the lawn.

The town office question replaced one voters passed in March. Third Selectman Doug Baston said he thought it was nice the latest one, he called a technical article, passed easily. He had had some concern due to opposition around the first vote, he said. Now the board just wants to see the project through, including lining up contractors for site work, Baston said.

He said the town has gotten word production has started on the modular that will become the town office.

A show of hands decided each article. Moderator Chris Cooper counted three opposing votes on the town office question.

The property tax offset came in two articles, one that tapped $300,000 in revenues First Selectman Melissa Spinney said the town routinely uses to offset taxes. The board put it on the warrant to be more transparent, she explained. Voters passed it and the other one, tapping funds left over from the town-wide revaluation. The article had no dollar figure. In response to a question from Kathy Zuppa, Spinney estimated about $12,000 will be left.

Mike Trask asked if it could instead help pay for the new town office. Cooper said it could not, because the article said nothing about that.

The offsets were figured into the estimated taxes property owners got via mail with their proposed new valuations, Spinney said after the meeting.

Rule changes voters passed limit a lot's length to width ratio outside the shoreland zone to 3-to-1; bar the use of odd-shaped lots that join other parcels to meet lot size rules; limit any of a subdivision's lots to at most a 5-1 lot depth-shore frontage ratio; require subdivision applicants at their final review to provide copies of Maine Department of Transportation approval for street and driveway entrances to state-aid or state highways; and require trackable mail such as priority mail or certified mail with a return receipt for notices to property owners within 2,000 feet of a proposed site. Voters also added a section requiring subdivisions to comply with timber harvesting rules.

Voters tapped reserves for up to $10,000 in repairs to the salt and sand shed and up to $18,000 in work on town buildings. Selectmen said the meetinghouse will be part of that work. Alna’s volunteer archivist Doreen Conboy supports all the proposed work on the historic buildings, officials told residents.

“And if you can’t trust Doreen Conboy, who can you trust,” Cooper said.

Responding to questions from Trask, selectmen said the town’s plowing contractor Hagar Enterprises will be moving the sand away from the wall for the painting or epoxy work, and the board plans to set new terms for the shed’s use and ramifications if those are not followed; the firm said its trucks do not go high enough to have put the holes in the ceiling, selectmen added.

At one point in the meeting, Cooper offered to buy Trask a drink depending on how he conducted himself. At meeting’s end, Cooper asked if Trask had earned the drink. “A weak one,” Baston answered.