OXFORD – At a Thursday special town meeting, voters rejected plans to buy two new plow trucks, saying the $225,000 question should have gone to the Budget Committee first.

Voters also questioned whether maintenance on the existing fleet was being kept up, saying they didn’t want to throw good money after bad.

Selectmen agreed to set up a meeting with the budget panel, but pointed out that the March town meeting already gave approval for the funds to purchase one highway department truck.

The three-article warrant asked if $125,000 should be spent on one truck, and $100,000 on another. The funds would come in both cases from the town’s surplus account.

When both items came up, motions were made to reduce the requested amount to zero. Both were passed unanimously, effectively rejecting the proposals.

“As chairman of the Budget Committee, we should have known about this and had a meeting,” said Gary Smith, one of about 25 residents attending the meeting.

Lois Pike said it has been the town’s standard practice for money articles to go before the Budget Committee before being brought to a town meeting. “Either we’re going to do it that way, or we’re not,” she said.

Selectman Michael Thompson expressed frustration at the total rejection of the proposal, which had been discussed with selectmen and the town’s road foreman, Steve Brown, at a recent selectmen’s meeting. The plan was to buy a bigger, 7- or 12-yard dump wheeler capable of hauling more gravel to cut down on the time spent laying sand and salt. The other purchase would be a Ford F-550 dump truck to be used as a fifth truck, mostly for salting purposes.

“We’ve gone from one extreme to the other, which happens all the time in this town,” Thompson said. “Let’s get working together instead of fighting all the time.”

But resident Kerry Halterman pointed out that most of the fights have been about the process used, not the merits of the request.

Selectman Roger Smedberg was also frustrated, for a different reason.

“A lot of you are accusing the road crew of not doing any maintenance, and not a one of you has had the decency to ask the road foreman about it,” Smedberg said.

Brown, a non-resident, was then allowed to speak, even though the vote had already been taken. He defended the highway department’s attention to maintenance, and pointed out that several trucks in the fleet are just plain worn out.

“Ten years is about the limit on a plow truck, and we’ve got 13 years on two, and 17 years on another,” Brown said. “If we’d of abused them, they’d of been worn out a long time ago.”

He said the town garage was open to anyone who wanted to inspect things for themselves. “You ought to have your facts, because what I heard tonight is not true.”