PARIS – After returning to the Board of Selectmen with more detailed plans, the Paris Veterans Memorial Committee won unanimous approval Monday night to place a monument in Moore Park.

The committee has proposed placing five 32- by 60-inch monuments in a semicircle with a 25-foot diameter. The memorial will feature the names of Paris residents who honorably served in the military.

“It’s really never been an issue of whether we were going to approve this,” Selectman David Ivey said.

Selectmen had previously expressed support for a memorial, but asked that the committee draw up more detailed plans before approving a space in the park. However, the board did have one more issue to work out with the committee regarding whether the memorial should be set back 10 feet closer to the intersection of Park and High streets.

Ivey said the new location would allow pedestrians to have more room in front of the monument. Onni Raasumma, head of the memorial committee, said such a move would place the memorial on a hill, which would have to be excavated.

“You’re gaining nothing by moving it back,” Raasumma said. “We’re trying to make this accessible for the senior citizens, and you can’t do that on that side hill.”

Several residents at the meeting expressed their support for placing the memorial where it was plotted, 177 feet from the intersection.

“Authorize them that space,” said resident and veteran Pete Kilgore. “They’re not going to disappoint you.”

The board approved giving a site to the committee after Selectman Gerald Kilgore made an amendment that the committee should be given the space, and that the memorial should not be set back.

At the selectmen’s meeting Nov. 15, the board opted not to grant the committee a space in the park until it received more detailed plans regarding the space. Kilgore was the only selectman voting to give the space to the committee at that meeting.

At Monday’s meeting, Kilgore’s truck sported a sign reading “Welcome to the Circus,” and Kilgore himself brought in popcorn to protest the extended discussion over the issue.

“I’d have given it to them wherever they wanted it,” Kilgore said.

Kilgore said the sign was also in response to the increasing openness of the meetings following Chairman Ernest Fitts III’s decision to allow public comment during the selectmen’s discussion of articles.

“We don’t have a selectmen’s meeting anymore,” Kilgore said.

The parks and recreation committee had previously advocated that the memorial be placed in an alternate location. Recreation director Stacey Tibbetts said a monument will take space away from events such as the recently revived Moore Art in the Park show, be a target for vandalism, increase maintenance costs, and open the door to more monuments which might crowd the park.

“The issue has nothing at all to do with what we feel about veterans,” Tibbetts said Tuesday. “There are more things to look into than just where we’re going to put this monument.”

Raasumma said no work will commence on the memorial during the winter. He said fundraising will begin around the beginning of the year, although the committee has already received donations.