WESTPORT — Nothing brings out voters like a question of raising taxes.

So many people attended the Oct. 27 Special Town Meeting at Westport High School that parking spots were improvised on the school’s grassy areas and checking in voters cut into the start of the meeting by at least 15 minutes. Although, the meeting only had eight articles to vote on, 232 more people showed up than did at the annual Town Meeting last March.

But with proposals to raise local taxes on restaurant meals and rooms in hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, 511 voters turned it into a four-hour-long back-and-forth on financial issues. The other issues that drew the most discussion were whether to lease Town Farm to the Trustees of Reservations for 99 years and whether to make changes to the Inclusionary Housing By-law.

Moment of silence

Before the Special Town Meeting got down to business, a moment of silence was called in memory of Town Planner Gale Nigrelli who had died the day before, Monday, Oct. 23. Ms. Nigrelli had been battling cancer.

Much debate over meals tax

Without doubt, most people had come to cast a vote on the two tax issues.

The state had given towns and cities the option to increase local taxes on restaurant meals by three-quarters of a percent and on hotel rooms by up to two percent. If the town went for it and enacted the taxes on Jan. 1, the state estimated the town might bring in $74,197 in meals taxes and $29,368 from hotel rooms taxes.

The Finance Committee reported that both town and school departments believe they’ll run into deficits this year. “Projections from town department heads and school officials suggest more funding may be necessary than budgeted in this fiscal year to cover operational costs,” members wrote in the review of the warrant. Despite this, the finance committee did not support raising either of the taxing options.

Antone Vieira, finance committee chairman, said that the committee does not agree with state estimates of how much the town would collect. The majority of the committee also thought it would hurt those few businesses that would be taxed and their employees during the slowest two quarters of the year. Mr. Vieira said, “The timing is the problem on this one. We’d be hitting them in the worst possible time.”

School Committee member Michael Sullivan said the committee supported the taxes because the town needs the money.

Both the town and the school department have had cuts in state aid, Mr. Sullivan said. And the school department also took on a few unexpected special-education students that added $181,000 to operational costs. He said the school department expects to end the year with a $42,600 deficit.

“There is a major gap in our needs and the anticipated revenues,” Mr. Sullivan said. “We’re proposing a new revenue stream” to help close that gap.

School committee member Timothy Harrenstein said of their decision to support tax proposals, “We wrestled with it a great deal. It’s never a great time to raise taxes.” But “we’re revenue-challenged” in Westport. So the school committee voted to support what he said is a “consumer tax” instead of one that would hit all residents.

Public opinion was divided nearly in half on the meals tax question.

Tom Hancock said, “It’s not just the school committee that’s hurting — it’s the whole community.” He said the meals tax would fall upon family-owned restaurants — “our own neighbors. Let’s not continue to nickel and dime them.”

Lino Rego said the tax would hurt Westport’s restaurants more than in other communities which have chain restaurants and franchises. He added that voters should remember that these restaurants employ many children from town.

Paying an additional 25-cents tax on a $30 restaurant bill (plus another $1.88 in state taxes), said Grace Newcomer, “I don’t begrudge that to Westport. I think Westport needs it.” She added that, “I don’t think the tax is really that much a of a hardship” or will cause people to stay away from the town’s restaurants.

Henry Swan said, “I think it’s little enough to help us with a desperate situation in town.” Then he added that he hopes local restaurants will still serve him.

Richard Lafrance, whose family owns Lafrance Hospitality (White’s, Bittersweet Farm, Rachel’s Lakeside, Hampton Inn), said his businesses are “struggling” right now.

“Why do we want to put a Band-Aid on one thing and have another area bleed?” he said.

Mary Lou Daxland agreed with Mr. Lafrance. She said that while eating breakfast at a local restaurant, she saw only a quarter of the typical number of patrons. “This is a bad time to raise taxes.”

Dick Barresi said that although a three-quarter of a percent tax increase sounds small, “taxes have an unfortunate ability to grow.”

Only three selectmen told voters of their opinion on the tax proposals.

Selectman Paul Schmid said that he supports these tax increases, even if it costs him his selectman’s seat. He said the town needs this money, not only to cover state cuts but also to help with what has become an annual deficit in the snow-and-ice budget. The town has tried to absorb the cuts and deficits as best as possible without laying off any employees.

“I know some of you don’t want to increase taxes, and if I were to make a career out of being a selectman, probably this is not a good way to do have a career,” Mr. Schmid said. “But we don’t have a lot of choices.”

Selectman Gary Mauk said that the state has tried raising taxes to cover deficits, which caused people to stop spending, “and the state lost more revenue.” He said, “We can’t tax our way out of a tax problem.”

Selectman Brian Valcourt said he “reluctantly supports this article” because the town is “dire need of funds.”

After an hour of discussion, the question was called to a vote by hand. The school committee had proposed voting by ballot, which would have meant that all voters would have had to clear the auditorium and get checked back in — which had delayed the start of the meeting — to receive a paper ballot. Voters chose to go with a hand vote. The votes appeared dead-even so they were cast again by hand and counted. The meals tax was defeated by only 40 votes, with 249 against and 209 for.

Since most of the previous discussion also applied to the hotel rooms tax, only a few spoke before this went to a vote. And after the last vote, at least a dozen voters had left. So raising taxes on rooms in hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and inns was easily defeated by a comparison of the hand votes.

Town Farm

A 99-year lease for Town Farm also produced considerable comment before going to vote.

For the past few months, selectmen have debated whether a 30-year lease, like the one the town gave to the Westport Youth Athletic Association to build sports fields on land on Route 177, would be better than a much longer lease to the Trustees of Reservations who plan to restore the historic buildings and maintain the property, keep the fields in agricultural use, and provide educational programs for the public. That length of time bothered many people who spoke against the 99-year lease.

A few even suggested selling the farm instead of making it a public space.

Richard Desjardins, a local real-estate attorney, said he believes Town Farm, a 40-acre farm on 830 Drift Road with views of the river, would sell for $2-$3 million. “It’s a gem of a property. It’s a town asset in a town that doesn’t have a lot of assets.”

“Who are we to lock this asset away,” said Mr. Desjardins, adding that a short-term lease would at least “allow us the maneuverability in the worst-case scenario to get our hands back on the asset.”

The finance committee was split in favor of a 99-year lease to the Trustees of Reservations. The chairman, Antone Vieira, said at the meeting that he was one of the members who did not support the lease. “We have a five-year lease (since 2006 with the Trustees of Reservations) that we can still negotiate,” he said. This would give the town time to appraise the property and decide if it should be sold, perhaps with a conservation or agricultural restriction on it.

William Underwood, chairman of the town building committee, said that the town will have to restore and maintain the property — which he estimated would cost $500,000 — if they don’t lease it to the Trustees, which means taxpayers would have to cough up the funds. “Therefore I think it would be irresponsible” not to pass this lease, he said.

Chip Gillespie said selling the property is “a short-sighted fix.” Westport would lose a piece of its history since the Town Farm used to house the town’s poor who would work the fields or do chores in exchange for their accommodations.

Some people noted that the lease includes a provision that allows the town take back the property by eminent domain and pay the Trustees the depreciated value of their investment to that point.

Peggy Stevens, director of the Westport Land Conservation Trust, said the Trustees have her organization’s support because it is a “professional, thorough and thoughtful” group that is “best suited to care for the farm.”

Nearly an hour into the discussion, the question was called to a vote. An overwhelming majority of hands shot up to approve the 99-year lease. Asking for the no vote was probably unnecessary.

Central Village

Only two people commented on the project to make Central Village more pedestrian-friendly before voters gave it their strong support.

The vote was to use $23,000 from the Community Preservation Committee budget to provide the last piece of funding to the project. The town had already approved $17,000 at a prior Town Meeting, making the town’s total contribution $40,000 for the engineering and design costs. A $394,000 state grant, awarded to the town two weeks ago, will pay for all of the construction costs.

The plan is to redo Main Road from Village Way, across from Westport Apothecary, to the police station. The vehicle lanes will be re-striped smaller to 11-feet-wide in order to make room for 4-foot shoulders for bicyclists on either side as well as 5-foot sidewalks on both sides. The Central Village Public Improvements Committee says this will make it easier and safer for pedestrians and bicyclists to get around what is essentially Westport’s downtown area, and, they hope, will slow traffic.

A voter said that sidewalks in Central Village will be used like the ones on Route 6 — hardly ever.

But David Dionne disagreed. People aren’t walking in the village “because it’s not safe,” he said. “If you build it, walkers will come.”

Affordable housing

The last article on the warrant wasn’t discussed until a quarter to 11 p.m. Planning Board chairman John Montano thinks this hurt the board’s ability to answer questions on such a complex question as changing the Inclusionary Housing By-law.

“In hindsight I would have requested to be earlier on the warrant,” he said. There was only about 15 minutes to discuss the two main amendments to the by-law, and at least half of voters had left the meeting by the vote on Town Farm.

The planning board proposes to amend the size of a subdivision, from an 8-lot subdivision to a 15-lot subdivision, before the developer would be required to include affordable housing in the project. The qualifying household income was also proposed to increase from 70 percent to 80 percent of the area median income to be eligible to buy an affordable unit.

After the meeting, Mr. Montano explained why the board wants to increase the development size — the main sticking point with voters who rejected amending the by-law.

Mr. Montano said the current by-law requirements for an 8-lot subdivision to include at least one affordable unit is a “burden” on developers who make up their loss from an affordable unit with sales on the others. He said this requirement “inhibits affordable housing from being built” because developers don’t think they’ll reap enough from the seven other houses. “You’re asking a developer to lose money on 20 percent of their subdivision,” he said.

Under a 15-lot subdivision, the developer would have to provide two affordable units. State law says that subdivisions of up to 20 lots only need to include two affordable units.

“It’s not really until 20 that it’s doable by a developer,” Mr. Montano said. “If you’re asking a developer to give away that much, it has to be reasonable.”

Mr. Montano said the board will propose this by-law amendment again at the next Town Meeting. He hopes the people who had concerns will come to planning board meetings to discuss the changes.

“I feel as though it was a very contentious meeting. There was a lot of emotions over other articles, and we presented at 10:45 (p.m.) after most people left,” he said. “It’s hard to communicate some of these complex issues. I think there was a degree of confusion. People thought we were giving away the farm.”

Votes at the Special Town Meeting

Budget: PASSED

• Article 1: To reduce the school budget by $89,567, which is the amount of Chapter 70 funds that the state reduced in aid to the school department. This vote balanced the budget.

Meals tax: DEFEATED

• Article 2: To raise local taxes on restaurant meals by three-quarters of a percent to a seven percent tax. The tax would have gone into effect on Jan. 1, and the town believed it would have collected an estimated $74,197 in meals taxes.

Hotel rooms tax: DEFEATED

• Article 3: To raise local taxes on hotel rooms by two percent, increasing the local portion to six percent.

Bills: PASSED OVER; NO VOTE

• Article 4: To pay bills from prior fiscal years. NEB, Radiology, P.C.: $602.39. Kopelman and Paige, P.C.: $19,371.69. Interstate Battery: $109.95.

Village project: PASSED

• Article 5: To use $23,000 from the Community Preservation Committee's funds for the Central Village sidewalks project. With this money and a $394,000 grant (which will foot almost the entire bill) that the CPC recently received, the town now has the money it needs to finish the design and pay for the construction.

Town Farm: PASSED

• Article 6: To petition the state legislature to enact special legislation for a long-term lease, allowing the town to lease the Town Farm, on 830 Drift Road, to the Trustees of Reservations for 99 years. Special legislation is required for long-term leases.

Planning services: PASSED

• Article 7: To transfer $20,000 from the Planning Board’s personnel services account to its expenses for professional services account to pay for services rendered in reviewing the Zoning By-laws and tow’s Master Plan.

Affordable housing regulation change: DEFEATED

• Article 8: To amend Zoning By-law Article 13 on Inclusionary Housing to increase the size of a project before it is required to have affordable units, to change the income requirements to purchase an affordable unit, and place deed restrictions on these units. First, changing the eligible household income to be no more than 80 percent (now 70 percent) of the area median income to buy an affordable unit. Second, dividing land into 15 or more lots (now it is eight or more lots) will be required to make 10 percent of units into affordable housing. Third, eliminating the requirement to build the affordable units in a project before the market-rate units, and change the provision to place a permanent deed restriction on affordable units.