The Wiscasset Select Board will hold a special town meeting for voters to reconsider raising $66,764 for planning. Voters will also be asked to approve the purchase of an ambulance. Neither a date nor a location for the meeting was set Tuesday night.

In a 3-2 vote, with Ben Rines Jr. and Bob Blagden dissenting, the board opted to consider the planning article at a special town meeting. Chair Judy Colby made the motion. “The petition stated they were requesting an open town meeting and people who signed it did so thinking a special town meeting would be held,” she said.

Rines said it’s wrong to overturn a ballot vote with a special town meeting. “Our concern should be with the 764 residents who voted in June and it’s an insult to suggest people didn’t know what they were voting on when they voted down the planning budget.”

Petitions don’t speak for the will of the people, Blagden said, they speak for the petitioners. “I don’t know how it is possible to have two legal opinions that are so far apart,” he commented.

Former selectman Bill Barnes said reconsidering the planning budget at a special town meeting after voters had turned it down at the polls was “a slap in the face to voters.”

The board sought legal opinions from Maine Municipal Association and Shana Cook Mueller of Bernstein Shur of Portland. Both stated selectmen must honor the petition within 60 days of its submission, which was received and verified by the town clerk on July 5. The Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce led the petition effort seeking to reverse a June 13 decision by voters rejecting the planning budget by a margin of almost two to one.

Cook Mueller said selectmen could opt to hold either a special town meeting or referendum vote “unless the Board determines it is reasonable to refuse to bring it to voters at all.”

After hearing from EMS Director Toby Martin, the board voted unanimously to include an article to buy a 2013 ambulance from the city of Auburn. Martin was authorized to take $2,000 from his operational budget to use as a down payment, leaving a balance of $96,690. He told selectmen he plans to finance the purchase from projected revenues and fees over the next year by providing ambulance services to Dresden. The new ambulance will replace a 2003 vehicle that has experienced mechanical problems.

Selectmen will have Town Manager Marian Anderson look into hiring a part-time traffic officer and crossing guard downtown. E. Davies Allen of Westport Island offered $1,000 toward it. Jim Kochan, a fine art and antique dealer with a business at 75 Main Street, told selectmen other Wiscasset merchants had pledged over $6,000 to fund the position.

For many summers, Wiscasset hired a summer crossing guard who also directed traffic at the intersection of Main and Middle streets. The position was cut from the police department budget over 20 years ago. Opponents of the Maine Department of Transportation’s $5 million downtown project see the traffic officer-crossing guard as an alternative to the installation of two traffic signals and other proposed changes.

Rines said he wished MDOT had considered this. “I have no faith the traffic lights will work the way they say they will,” he said.

Police Chief Jeff Lange said none of his reserve officers was interested in working the traffic detail although it might be possible to contract it to a third party.