RANDOLPH — The town will get a police force to call its own after all — at least for the coming fiscal year.

But Randolph will likely be grappling with what level of policing it requires, how much it should cost and who should pay for it for years to come.

Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a revised and pared-back budget proposal to establish a police department, after Town Meeting in March saw the Selectboard’s initial proposal handily rejected.

Tuesday’s tally was 344-184 in favor of a revised police budget. Turnout was nearly 34% of the 1,556 registered voters in the district, according to the town clerk’s office. That was up significantly from turnout at Town Meeting.

A big factor behind the swing from “no” to “yes” was that the revised budget this time did not come with a projected tax increase for property owners, according to Selectboard Chairwoman Trini Brassard.

The revised proposal provides “some level of police coverage,” Brassard said, while at the same time “having a neutral impact on taxes.”

She also thinks earlier “no” votes may have been due to uncertainty and confusion over the plan. Town officials had only weeks to develop a plan before Town Meeting after the Orange County Sheriff’s Department abruptly canceled its contract to provide policing for the town.

It also appears greater voter turnout played a role in flipping the outcome between March and May. For this vote, the town mailed ballots to police district residents. At Town Meeting in March, where turnout was 23%, ballots were available only at Town Hall.

The smaller budget calls for a police department of three officers, including a chief; one of the officer positions will still rely heavily on grant money. There will also be a part-time officer and administrative assistant.

The earlier proposal called for five full-time members and two part-time officers.

“Yeah, I want the cops,” Wayne Ladd said on his way into Town Hall on Tuesday to drop off his ballot.

A resident of South Pleasant Street, Ladd said he was voting on the issue for the first time. He didn’t attend Town Meeting in March, but he said he would have voted in favor of establishing a police department had he attended. Still, he was satisfied with the smaller force.

“I’m not concerned about a reduction in budget,” he said. “Three-and-a-half cops sounds like enough.”

Maria Puglisi, a police district resident who has lived on Partridge Hill Road since 1982, said the fact that her annual $750 tax bill would not increase helped to turn her previous “no” into a “yes” on Tuesday.

“I voted ‘no’ in March because I’ve been paying police taxes all these years, and I thought the rest of the town needs to be on board with this. The burden wasn’t shared evenly,” she said. “I went back and forth, but they brought it down to what I had been paying.”

Tuesday’s vote followed a spirited debate among residents both at Selectboard meetings and online about the necessity of a police force after the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said it could no longer provide policing services to the town due to lack of manpower.

The debate has resurfaced simmering tensions among three different segments of Randolph tax base, who all benefit in one way or another from police in town but aren’t all taxed the same way.

Only residents inside the Police District can vote on the tax to support the police department. Property owners outside the district but who reside within the town do not pay the police district tax. District property owners who live outside of Randolph pay the police district tax but can’t vote.

“That’s where the issue of taxation without representation comes up,” Brassard said.

Realizing it has cobbled together only a temporary solution, Randolph’s Selectboard has created a committee to examine the town’s policing needs and how it could sustain a police department — perhaps in conjunction with other communities — in the long term.

The revised police department budget of $524,000 is a reduction from the $771,000 budget voters rejected, 227-136, in March.

Jane Terry, a substitute librarian at Randolph Elementary School who lives on Elm Street and within the Police District since 2019, said she initially marked a “no” vote on the ballot for the revised budget but then after talking with her son, “who did a lot of research on the issue,” had her ballot torn up and changed her vote to “yes.”

Terry said the district contains “a hospital, a mental health services office (Clara Martin Center), a high school and a big elementary school,” which all present security needs.

“Once we found out about the shortage of state troopers, how there might be no backup if we needed police, I just felt it was a good thing,” Terry said outside Randolph Town Hall after casting her ballot Tuesday.

Terry’s son, Drew Terry, said he voted against the article for Randolph to establish its own police force at Town Meeting in March, but after delving into the issue and considering Randolph’s role as a commercial center in Orange County, changed his mind. He deemed the proposal that passed this week “reasonable.”

Drew Terry said he supports the town developing a long-term solution, such as dissolving the police district to spread the cost more equitably. He called that a “step in the right direction.”

“Voting this down is only going to bring back an even smaller, reduced budget and not do anything to move the merger along,” he said.

Kathleen Mason, a Vermont Technical College administrator who moved to Randolph from Brookfield, Vt., eight years ago, echoed Drew Terry’s remark that voting in favor of the reduced police department budget provides a path to a permanent solution.

“I think it’s really important we vote ‘yes’ on this because it will allow us to fund a police force while we have a healthy and robust conversation about what we’d like to see in a police force moving forward,” Mason said as she emerged from Town Hall after casting her ballot. Still, she acknowledged she “has very dear friends who don’t think (the revised budget proposal) is fiscally responsible.”

But Forest MacGregor, a retired electrical engineer who lives on Highland Avenue, said he remains “skeptical” that Randolph requires its own police department, at least one of the size proposed even under the approved budget.

“My perception about the town is that we have a very low crime rate and don’t need to establish a police department here,” MacGregor said after voting on Tuesday.

He added that he subscribes to the theory of “Parkinson’s law,” which he described as “once you establish a budget, it goes up” indefinitely.

“We’re more Mayberry than mayhem,” he said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.

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