PERU – In a town budget referendum Tuesday, residents turned down $70,000 toward the purchase of a new road department plow truck, with 86 in favor and 97 opposed.

In his 2008-09 road commissioner’s report, Edward “Joe” Roach pointed out that the $70,000 spread out over two years was preferable to a $140,000 sum spent in one year on the new plow truck. He said that for the town to make the purchase in time for the winter of 2010-11, it needed to make the order in June 2010.

The article was one of three in the 33-article warrant that voters opposed. They also voted against increasing Peru’s property tax levy limit of $180,815, established by state law, by a vote of 126-65.

Additionally, residents defeated an article asking them to raise and appropriate $10,000 for the maintenance of the former Peru Elementary School for the 2009-10 fiscal year. They rejected it by a 103-88 vote.

The town office is in a brick building behind the main school building. The defeated article would have provided for upkeep of the primary school structure.

Selectmen have noted that the town is still looking for a tenant for the large school building. The committee that was working on uses for the building has expanded to include representatives from the recreation committee, the historical society, and other groups.

In the selectmen’s race, Eric Horn and Tim Holland ran unopposed and won three-year seats. They will replace Rodney Jamison and Burchard “Bill” Scott, both of whom decided to resign.

Vera Parent was re-elected as town clerk/treasurer/tax collector. She noted that turnout for the referendum “was on the low side,” with 197 voters participating.

“Open town meetings in the past few years, we were lucky if we got 50 to 100 people,” she observed. “That was a driving force for the selectmen to change it to a referendum.”

However, Parent said, the referendum hasn’t drawn as many people out to vote as originally expected. With the importance of the municipal budget, this is a matter of concern, she added.

“We’re getting more people, but it’s still not there yet,” Parent said.

Some residents were bothered by not having town reports available before the referendum to help them make decisions on the articles. In their selectmen’s report, the board noted that it struggled to come up with a way to get information out to residents in a timely fashion because of the change to a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year.

“It’s taken some getting used to,” Parent admitted of the change in fiscal year.