It took three tries, but at their annual town meeting this week West Tisbury voters finally found a plan they could agree on to renovate their old town hall. On Tuesday night voters said yes to spending $5.2 million to restore the building.

A corresponding ballot question to exempt $4.8 million in bond debt from the provisions of Proposition 2 1/2 was approved at the annual town election yesterday.

The remainder of the funding will come from free cash and town Community Preservation Act funds, which will contribute $500,000 over five years.

There were whistles and applause following a detailed presentation of the plans on the town meeting floor by Bea Phear, chairman of the town hall renovation committee, and Chuck Hodgkinson, chairman of the space needs committee.

“I want to keep West Tisbury as West Tisbury. A lot of good people worked really hard on this. Without it, we’ll probably end up with some steel building,” said Malcolm Jones after the article was approved 200 to 6.

Town hall renovation was one of 43 articles approved in a 52-article town warrant that required voters to spend two nights and nearly six hours to complete. The Tuesday night session drew 291 voters; 121 returned for the Wednesday night session, town moderator Pat Gregory said.

Voters approved five affordable housing articles; they endorsed an update to the town employee wage and job classification system and approved a number of infrastructure repair and replacement requests for the town. They agreed to buy a new chipper for the highway department and a new cruiser for the police department.

Voters agreed to pay $200,000 for road repairs, but they balked at spending $160,000 for new paths on Old County Road and only grudgingly approved $5,000 to complete a bike path on the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.

Voters also rejected a $50,000 request to pay for an engineering project to dredge the scenic Mill Pond. The vote was 131 to 99. Kent Healy disputed selectman Glenn Hearn’s support for the project. “The weeds are mostly located near the dam and a half a dozen volunteers can clear that up on a Saturday afternoon,” Mr. Healy said.

Voters soundly defeated two articles that called for changing the town meeting day and also its format. One article asked to move the annual town meeting to a Saturday morning on a trial basis for next year. A second article would have require

paper ballots, known as an Australian ballot, to replace voice, hand or standing votes if 20 voters requested it.

“We should take advantage of this opportunity to include everyone, the tongue-tied, the faint of heart as well as the brave of heart,” said Jonathan Revere.

But Prudy Burt had another view. “Town meeting is a miracle. We have a chance to disagree, sometimes vehemently, then shake hands going out the door. This is part of our rural character. The teachers will still teach and the cops and fireman will still respond if we vote against [their requests],” she said, adding:

“I vote against the new cruiser every year, and I’m not checking for cops in my rearview mirror.”

The article was defeated and then by chance it was police chief Beth Toomey’s turn to stand and speak in favor of her request for a new cruiser.

“This may not be the best time for this,” the chief said, drawing laughter.

The chief got her cruiser.

Voters narrowly approved a new eight-step wage scale plan to replace the current seven-step plan. They handily passed a $15,000 expense for an updated set of job descriptions and classification and granted a three per cent increase to town employees.

The $13 million town operating budget passed with little debate, although several residents challenged the lack of detail about education costs.

“I ask this every year and every year nothing changes, but we are spending more than $7 million for education and all we see are two budget lines,” said Broadside publisher Robert Potts.

Les Cutler agreed. “The highway department provides four times as much detail as the education budget,” he said. Selectman Jeffrey S. (Skipper) Manter, who is also a member of the school committee, promised that next year’s annual town report will have more detail.

Some voters questioned the affordable housing articles, saying that applications for rental and home ownership should be restricted to West Tisbury residents,

Linda Sibley disagreed. “This is an Islandwide issue. There are West Tisbury residents in Morgan Woods [an affordable housing complex in Edgartown] and I can’t bring myself to say that if you don’t live in West Tisbury today, you can’t live here tomorrow.”

In all, voters approved three new affordable rental units at Sepiessa Point and gave a green light to 11 new affordable homes as well as rental subsidies and mortgage assistance plans.

And they again defeated a request to have the town withdraw from the Up-Island Regional School District. The request is put in each year by Mr. Manter.

School committee member Dan Cabot spoke at length against the request.

And voters agreed.