NEWRY – A majority of voters OK’d taking $106,941 from surplus for a variety of items at Tuesday night’s special town meeting in the town office. But, they defeated a revision to the shoreland zoning ordinance and map for the second time this year.

Slightly more than 30 people attended the 45-minute meeting, during which a nine-article warrant was discussed.

Money articles included:

• Appropriating $46,078 from the overlay account and taking $30,000 from the town’s $1.7 million surplus to cover tax abatements caused by an assessing error. Discounts on lots in The Peaks and Sunday River golf course subdivisions should have been credited, but weren’t.

• Taking $6,765.47 from surplus to apply to the Bear River Grange Hall improvement account.

• Taking $6,687 from surplus and putting it in the fire department account.

• Taking $1,489.63 from surplus and putting it in the fire department equipment capital reserve account.

• Taking $15,000 from surplus for an engineering plan to stabilize the high eroding bank off Lone Pine Road on Bear River.

• Taking $5,000 from surplus and buying new computerized tax software.

• Appropriating $42,000 from surplus to cover a calculation error involving the tax assessment.

Selectmen’s Chairman Steve Wight explained after the meeting that extra money was needed for the three municipal accounts to cover expected shortfalls.

The Bear River engineering plan is needed, Wight said during the meeting, to prevent a washout. He said it was caused by erosion that felled a large pine tree, which took a large chunk of the river bank with it.

Regarding the calculation error, Administrative Assistant Loretta Powers said during the meeting that $40,000 of the $42,000 was OK’d by town meeting voters in March to cover discounts for taxes paid early. It wasn’t calculated into the tax assessment. The $2,000 is for a general purpose fund to cover unanticipated emergencies.

Article 2, which sought to clear up confusion regarding Newry’s shoreland zoning ordinance and map, generated plenty of discussion. Essentially, it involved Bear River from the Grafton Township-Newry line to the river’s confluence with Branch Brook, a distance of roughly 15,000 feet or three miles, Wight said.

“The ordinance doesn’t match the map, and it’s all screwed up,” Wight said after the meeting, explaining the need for the proposed revision.

Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection only requires a 75-foot setback in the stream protection zone, but Newry’s ordinance revision applies that and a 250-foot floodplain setback under a resource protection zone.

Retired administrative assistant and landowner Sylvia Gray argued that the town can’t have both in place.

“Stream protection and floodplain are two different things. You can’t mix them,” Gray said to Wight after the meeting.

According to Wight, the state says Newry’s shoreland zoning doesn’t have to be as restrictive as it is. It wasn’t done to protect the area from development so much, but, rather, to protect the river, which Wight said is classified as AA high quality by the state. Double A means there is absolutely no discharge entering the river.

“It’s a double A river, and I’d hate to see us cut the protection back on it,” he said.