ORFORD — Most second Tuesdays of March, Orford residents show up at Town Meeting in a mood to cut spending first and ask questions later.

This Tuesday night, a majority of the 150 voters who filed into the Rivendell Academy gymnasium gave their leaders the green light to spend $23,000 more than they were requesting. But they also ousted two Selectboard members in ballot voting.

Former Selectboard Chairman Tom Steketee won a three-way race with 151 votes, defeating incumbent David Smith, 96 votes, and Ruth Hook, 83 votes, for a three-year term. Fred Kidder II took 222 votes to defeat Selectman Jim McGoff, 115, who was appointed last June, for the year remaining on that term.

In addition to endorsing the Selectboard’s requested operating budget of $1 million with little debate, voters overrode two of the board’s recommendations on warrant articles separate from the budget.

The longest debate of the two-hour, 40-minute gathering revolved around new Police Chief Jason Bachus’ plan to include a $2,000 stun gun and a $3,000 electronic-ticketing system in his arsenal of enforcement equipment. The Selectboard earlier this year had stricken those items from the final warrant, as recommended by a majority of members of the town’s budget advisory committee.

On the Town Meeting floor, McGoff remained adamant against giving the chief free rein to use a stun gun, citing a 2012 incident in which a Thetford man died after being hit by a stun gun fired by a State Police trooper.

“It fries you inside,” McGoff said. “It’s like cooking a hot dog. … The town could be liable for this.”

Civilian advocates for the chief complained that the Selectboard undercut Bachus by eliminating articles for the stun gun and for the ticketing system at a lightly attended regular board meeting, not long after a public hearing at which it appeared the articles were safe.

“We have hired this man,” resident Faith Knapp said. “He puts on a (bulletproof) vest. He has his (fire)arms. He is willing to put his life on the line every day. … This man deserves our support. We should stand behind him.”

The voters did so, by acclamation from the floor, by adding $5,000 to a warrant article that had started life at $1,500 to buy body-camera equipment. The new article leaves the door open for the chief and the board to figure out how and when to spend the money.

Voters also added $18,000 to an article aimed at raising and depositing $243,000 into capital reserve funds. The additions raised the fund for Highway Department trucks from $30,000 to $36,000, and the fund for a backhoe/loader from $7,500 to $11,000.

In other business, the gathering declined, after a short debate, to vote on an article aiming to combine the elected positions of town clerk and tax collector into a single elected position starting in 2020. Under the current arrangement, which remains in place, the town clerk is paid by the hour while the tax collector receives a percentage of taxes paid to the town.

David Corriveau can be reache d at dcorriveau@vnews.com and  at 603-7 27-3304.