If voters shut down Wiscasset's town meeting May 31, the town could wind up owing employees $256,000 in severance costs, Selectmen's Chairman Ed Polewarczyk said.

He was responding publicly April 1 to a letter to the editor in which resident Ben Rines criticizes selectmen's choice of a town meeting budget vote, instead of a vote at the polls.

The letter points out residents' option to adjourn the town meeting. “If need be ... we the people in less than a minute can scrap this unwarranted town meeting ...,” Rines writes.

“There are consequences to shutting that open town meeting down,” Polewarczyk said at Tuesday's board meeting.

If no budget comes out of the meeting, selectmen could decide to send the budget to the polls, requiring a 45-day lead time that would run into the new budget year, he said.

Or the board could avoid that delay, and employee layoffs, by calling another town meeting, he said.

Resident Steve Mehrl suggested asking voters for a quarter of a year's funding to run the town on until a budget was passed.

Rines told selectmen their choice to hold a town meeting doesn't respect residents' past non-binding vote to decide the budget at the polls.

“This board is denying the wishes of the townspeople .... Your position isn't defendable,” he said.

In a brief interview afterward, Rines said his decision on whether or not to propose voters adjourn the meeting will depend on what he hears ahead of time from fellow residents. He will only show up at town meeting if he's going to make the motion to adjourn, he said.

He doesn't want to vote on a budget that not everyone can vote on, because town meetings leave out absentee voting, he said.

A fresh vote the board took Tuesday had the same outcome as others in recent weeks: 4-1, with Judy Colby opposed, to go forward with the town meeting.

Polewarczyk said about 60 percent of residents he has heard from favor the town meeting.

Selectman Pam Dunning reiterated one of the board's arguments: that town meetings can help people understand what they're voting on. Questions involving similar items can be confusing, she said.

The board also decided Tuesday to have hand-held voting keypads at town meeting, in place of hand-raising. Selectmen and the night's meeting-goers tried out the tabulators in a demonstration that Friends of Midcoast Maine Executive Director Jane Lafleur put on.

The small keypads provide anonymity, but cannot be used for any questions that voters choose to decide by secret ballot, Lafleur said. Also, if more than 400 people show up, the keypads cannot be used because there wouldn't be enough to go around, she said.