MINOT — Voters at the town meeting Saturday passed a spending plan for this year that is less than $1.5 million, and, according to Selectman Eda Tripp, calls for spending $66,800 less than last year.

The Board of Selectmen’s goal, Tripp said, was to pass a budget that kept property taxes level and, with less money projected to come in from outside sources, the only way was to cut real spending.

“The Board of Selectmen wanted to cut spending by $100,000,” Tripp said after the meeting. “We didn’t quite make that.”

Even with the overall spending cut, townspeople were able to find the money to make two major equipment purchases.

They voted to buy a new 10-wheeler truck, which will serve as a plow truck and a sander and authorized spending up to $152,000 financed over five years at about $32,000 a year.

“There’s no debt against the Highway Department now, and this is a good time to buy,” Town Administrator Arlan Saunders said. “This is it for a while.”

Saunders said the choices were to buy a new truck or spend $18,000 a year on a rental. The 1989 L-8000 truck up for replacement was beyond done.

“Actually, it was a Webber Energy truck that they donated to the Fire Department who used it as a tank truck that the Highway Department put some extra wheels under and then used for five years as a sander, and it’s just not worth it to keep it going,” Saunders said.

Budget Committee member Matt Callahan wanted to take Saunders up on his estimate that buying the new truck would save the town $18,000 and pushed for deducting that amount from the winter roads budget.

Saunders admitted that he saw the “potential” for an $18,000 savings.

“But this is not a perfect world,” he said. “This time last year we had spent $32,000 on winter roads. It’s $50,106 to date already this year. There goes your $18,000.”

Townspeople left the total winter roads budget at $169,000, which now sits at $119,000 and has to last until Jan. 31, 2012.

Townspeople also approved up to $50,000 to replace the 1996 rescue truck with a 2011 Yukon-style three-quarter-ton vehicle. The issue is reliability, Minot Emergency Management Agency Director Sharon Campbell pointed out. An attempt to raise all the money in one year was defeated before townspeople got behind a plan to finance it over two years.

The Fire Department budget request was cut by $5,000, the amount of money that had been estimated to repair the rescue truck, bringing the total to $77,205.

The Recreation Committee’s request for $40,000 plus rolling over $17,000 in trail grant reimbursements was trimmed to $13,000, plus the rollover. The money is for the development of a multiuse field large enough for football in the new Minot Memorial Park.

Over objections from both the Budget Committee and the selectmen, townspeople approved a $7,500 donation to the Minot-Hebron Athletic Association. That money, plus $10,000 the group hopes to receive from the town of Hebron (Minot selectmen had already authorized $2,500 to repair softball dugouts), is earmarked for work on the town’s old ball fields.

The Minot Summer Enrichment Program received the $2,500 it requested for scholarships.

Rescue Chief Jim Allen and a detachment of uniformed fire and rescue personnel presented Steve French with a ceremonial brass fire ax on his retirement after 26 years as Minot’s fire chief.

Voter Registrar Hester Gilpatric reported that 77 of the town’s 2,071 registered voters attended.