Tisbury voters this week approved spending almost $7 million to build a new emergency services building.

By a margin of 566 votes to 398 they endorsed the borrowing of $6.8 million to construct the new building on Spring street, opposite the Tisbury elementary school, on town land which is currently the site of the town hall annex.

And by a slightly smaller majority — 552 to 405 — they approved borrowing another $115,000 to temporarily relocate the annex.

Clearly in a spending mood, they also came down in favor of spending another $200,000, proposed in two questions, to install two arrays of solar panels on the new building — despite the fact that last month’s town meeting (narrowly) voted that expenditure down, on the unanimous advice of selectmen and the finance committee.

The vote on those two questions will have no immediate spending impact because they failed at town meeting, but means the measures could still go ahead without a further ballot, if passed by a future town meeting.

Lastly, the electors overwhelmingly (675-272) authorized a debt exclusion to enable the town to make the final payment on a bond issued in 2001, thus lifting a $150,000 burden on the annual town budget.

All five articles were Proposition 2 1/2 overrides. As a result of their passage, taxes in Tisbury will increase by about $25 per $100,000 — or about $200 a year on an average $800,000 property in the first year.

The incremental effect will quickly decline however, as other debt is retired. It is expected to reduce to zero in four years.

And the town will get a sorely needed piece of infrastructure. As the chairman of the Emergency Services Facility (ESF) building committee, Joe Tierney, told town meeting, the existing fire station, in downtown Tisbury, is “a 50-year-old building that’s basically a slab on swamp construction. It’s slowly sinking into the swamp.”

Furthermore the location, in the most traffic-snarled part of town, made it difficult to respond promptly to crises. The new location should shave several minutes off response times.

The plan to house the town’s fire, ambulance and emergency management services together at a site away from the busy downtown area of Tisbury has been in train for several years.

Work on the new building is due to start in February.

The electors’ approval of the four questions on the ballot, relating to the ESF building, defied the weak economy; the fifth question was a direct result of it.

When the town began its budget process, Tisbury was looking at a budget hole of $600,000, or about four per cent. Question five gave the town $150,000 towards filling that hole.

Tisbury’s finance director, Tim McLean, said he now expected to be able to bring in a zero budget, without cuts to services or jobs.

The fifth question related to a bond issued in 2001.

“The money was borrowed to cap the landfill and put the park and ride lot up on High Point Lane. We never had a debt exclusion for it; we always paid it within our regular municipal budget,” Mr. McLean said.

“There is just one payment left on that bond, in fiscal 2011. But we are so tight against our levy limit this year that we decided to put that on the ballot.”

Passing it had taken “a lot of the strain off the budget,” he said. “It gave us another $150,000 of spendability.”

Also, he said, other numbers had come in somewhat better than expected. Before Tuesday’s vote, it was down to about $230,000.

A big contributor to the turnaround, he said, was in new growth in the property tax base.

“With the economy the way it was, I took a really low, conservative estimate,” he said.

“I always take the worst-case scenario, and hope that it turns out better, rather than take the best-case scenario and then have to go back and tell people the bad news.

“So, based on what I was hearing from everybody, I assumed a new growth figure of $50,000. It now appears that number is going to be like $200,000.

“This relates to last year’s building permits,” he said.

“Any time anybody pulls a new building permit for a house, or even a shed — anything that wasn’t taxed before — it adds to the tax base.”

So, between the vote on question five and the stronger-than-expected new growth figure, the budget was down only about $80,000.

For the rest, Mr. McLean said, “we’re waiting for a free cash number from the Department of Revenue.”

But there, too, he said, he had made a very conservative estimate, which now looked likely to be at least $50,000 on the low side.

The bottom line is that even if there is no growth in the budget for the coming year, there will be no significant shrinkage either.