PARIS — According Paris resident Ian Truman, King Hill Road is bad. So bad that his family doesn’t want to visit him, and when his wife needed to be taken to the hospital a few years ago, the ambulance almost crashed. Now, Truman will have to wait longer before the town addresses his road because voters rejected a $4 million bond.

On Monday night, Paris voters narrowly voted down an article that would have allowed the town to take out a $4 million bond to address  30 major road projects in the next three years by a 49 to 47 vote. According to the article, the $4 million bond would have been paid back in seven years, with an interest rate of 2.3 percent, bringing the total payback to $4,455,971.

At the Special Town Meeting Monday, Chairman Rusty Brackett said the town’s mill rate wouldn’t increase with the passage of the bond.

“No, it’s not. We normally budget $500,000 a year for road repair. This year, in fact, we’ve added $100,000 to that. The payment is well within that to pay for a year on the bond … it will not affect the mill rate,” said Brackett.

At the meeting Monday, former Paris Town Manager Vic Hodgkins called those numbers into question. The town provided a $571,000 yearly payback figure for the bond, but Hodgkins said that figure would be significantly higher with interest.

“My simple math … if we take $455,971 and we all pretend for a minute that we’re going to round that up to four and a half million, and the payback is seven years, that means that the payback is better than $600,000 a year. I don’t know where you folks get your numbers from, but simple math says that $4.55 million divided by seven is greater than the numbers I’ve heard so far.”

According to that math, $4.55 million divided by seven means a $636,000 payment each year, well above the $571,000 cited by the town.

Town Manager Dawn Waisanen said the $571,000 did not include interest.

In addition, Hodgkins said this current budget year, a “couple hundred” thousand dollars in the town’s surplus account were applied to offset spending and lower taxes. At the meeting, said there wasn’t much left in that surplus account.

“We have very little in that surplus account … I don’t know the exact number, but it’s not even enough to talk about,” said Waisanen. According to Hodgkins, without that surplus and the added cost of the bond repayments, the mill rate would go up 50 or 60 cents.

“With no surplus there, you’re going to have to automatically cut $200,000 from the budget or we’re all going to have to face the facts … before we even make a decision tonight that our mill rate is going to go up 50 or 60 cents,” said Hodgkins.

According to former Paris Selectman Scott Buffington, Paris has historically had a higher mill rate than surrounding towns, and higher taxes affect the affordability of the town.

“I think that the town of South Paris has historically had a higher mill rate than the towns around us. A very important part with the real estate prices is how affordable our town is. When people go and apply for a mortgage, what you pay in taxes affects what you can borrow,” said Buffington.

Buffington, and several other residents supported voting down the article with the intention of calling another special meeting in the immediate future with bond options with different repayment rates. According to Buffington, more options on payments would allow the town to pick an option that would not affect the mill-rate on the roads.

“I think this needs to be thought through a little bit more. I would assume a well-built road should last 15-20 years. The payback on this bond is in a seven-year time frame. I would be more in favor for a bigger project that had a longer payback, or a smaller project that had a longer payback,” said Buffington.

Paris resident Troy Ripley said that the bond would be used to pay for three years of road work and leave four years where the road budget would be devoted to paying the bond back.

“Is it reasonable to say that we’re not going to do road repairs until we repay this bond?” asked Ripley. “Are you then going to come and say ‘now we need another four million dollars to do another eight years worth of work in three (years)?”, asked Ripley.

“My crystal ball isn’t working,” replied Brackett. “You look down through this list of roads, and in three years there’s going to be a list of roads that should not need it,” said Brackett.

“I thought about that same thing too, Troy. For three years, what are we going to do? You got nothing. We’re going to pay the fire station bond off in three years, so on that fourth year, we’re going to have that money. It’s not much, but if we can finagle numbers and play with budget numbers … ,” said Waisanen.

One fact not contested at the meeting was the fact that the roads listed on the voted-down plan need work.

“What I’m hearing is that yes it costs a lot of money, but it’s a problem that has gone on a long, long time. Probably a lot more money than we want to vote on,” said Truman.

It’s not immediately clear when the next special town meeting with more bond options will be called.