For the second time in six months, Woolwich voters rejected Pay As You Throw when they convened for Saturday’s annual town meeting.

A petitioned article that would have required residents to pay for curbside trash pickup was defeated 196-124 following a spirited debate in the Woolwich Central School gymnasium.

After residents breezed through the first dozen articles, a motion was made to dispense with other business and take up the PAYT article. As one man put it, “Why wait, it’s what most of us are here for.”

Moderator John Chapman responded by calling for a vote to bring the PAYT question to the floor, which passed by more than the required two-thirds majority.

“We put a fork in it in November, now we want to put in a trident,” Phil Gosline commented.

Ben Tipton, the petition’s sponsor, said in the four and a half months the town was part of PAYT, the community had reduced its solid waste tonnage and increased recycling.

“As soon as the program ended, the town fell back into its old ways — trash tonnage went right back up where it was before,” he said. Tipton added that restoring PAYT could potentially provide Woolwich with its largest property tax decrease in its history.

Others argued the tonnage reduction was because residents were burning their trash or disposing of it illegally. One woman commented it was too much expecting people to pay $1 and $2 per bag for WasterZero’s orange plastic trash bags. WasteZero, based in North Andover, Massachusetts, administered the program that ran from September 2015 to the middle of January.

Don Adams said the town had gone round-and-round on the issue for almost a year. “I don’t think there needs to be any more debate,” he said, adding, the issue was overwhelmingly decided at the general election.

Fred Kahrl of the Solid Waste and Recycling Committee warned that the community’s trash disposal options were rapidly shrinking. “I haven’t found another town of our size that offers curbside pickup. The committee wanted to encourage more recycling which is why we went to PAYT,” he said. “It’s not about money, it’s a vote about responsibility for the future.”

After the meeting, Adams said he was delighted with the turnout. “A lot of the people came today because they didn’t want to see PAYT returned. Now they (selectmen) have got to figure out what they’re going to do with the year’s worth of trash bags we got stuck with.”

The town had to buy back thousands of WasteZero bags that weren’t sold when the program ended.

Library funding approved

By a margin of more than 2 to 1, voters approved a $52,224 donation to Patten Free Library in Bath. This year’s request was $1,536 more than last year’s, prompting many to argue the funding request had grown too high.

Mary Ellen Kazimer, a Woolwich volunteer library trustee, noted the town had 1,044 active library cardholders. She said the 2016-17 donation amounted to about $17 per person. An annual membership costs $60 per person.

Several argued tax dollars shouldn’t be spent subsidizing residents’ use of the library.

Voters approved all of the $1.5 million 2016-17 town budget, which was $7,305 less than last year. The decrease is mostly due to a drop in the cost of curbside trash and recycling pickup.

In March, selectmen accepted a $190,120 bid from Riverside Disposal of Chelsea. Under the one-year agreement, the town has the option to renew the contract for another two years; EcoMaine in Portland will process trash and recyclables. Voters overwhelmingly approved the contract that was $40,430 less than the 2015 appropriation.

Voters increased fire department stipends for the fire chief from $7,284 to $11,500 and two assistant chiefs from $2,050 to $3,000. The stipend for fire captain will increase from $1,281 to $2,000 and for fire lieutenant from $640 to $1,000.

An article was approved seeking $10,000 to cover the costs of temporary administrative help at the town office. Selectmen’s Chairman David King Sr. said both the town administrator and town clerk are considering retirement. The money is to pay for training for both positions.

Voters raised $3,700 for surveying and engineering needed to make the Nequasset Park and swimming area ADA-compliant. They also agreed to form a new Woolwich Recreation Department and provided $7,000 in seed money. One man said seed monies were okay as long as they don’t grown like Jack in the Beanstalk.

Although town spending is down on the municipal side, Woolwich’s share of the Regional School Unit 1 budget rose $139,000. The vote on the 2016-17 school budget will be held in June, Woolwich’s share is $3.885 million.

After many years of holding the annual town meeting on a weeknight, selectmen returned to holding it on Saturday. When King asked for a show of hands on which day they preferred; most indicated they liked Saturday better.

Selectman Allison Hepler, who helped return town meeting to Saturday, said it was one of the largest turnouts she could remember. “I’m very pleased and I agree with the moderator, people were respectful to one another’s opinions,” she said.

More than 320 residents attended the meeting that ran just shy of three and a half hours.