It did not take long for Alfred residents to reject spending $400,000 to buy 53 acres on Kennebunk Road at a special town meeting Sept. 24.

The strong sentiment against buying the land, a potential site for a new town hall, was best summed up by Heidi Gendreau, who said residents are tightening their belts, "and the town needs to the same thing."

Applause followed Gendreau's comments, and a few minutes later almost every one of the standing-room-only crowd in the Alfred Elementary School gymnasium raised hands to vote the proposal down. Only a few raised hands in support.

Residents also questioned the need for a new town hall. A few speakers said there are no formal plans for use of the property, but as Robert Liberty said, the only discussion on use heard at an informational meeting Sept. 15 focused on putting a new town hall and other town buildings on the site.

The special town meeting lasted about as long as it took to delay the start in order to allow residents to sign in with the town clerks.

After the meeting was over, Gendreau shook hands with selectmen, offered her thanks for researching the site offered by owners Bob and Barbara Burns but said now was not the time to be spending town funds. The Burnses approached the town. Their son David is a selectmen, who recused himself from the proceedings.

Chairman Glenn Dochtermann said selectmen did the right thing in bringing the proposal before residents. The Burnses are looking to sell their property before winter.

The land purchase would have been paid for with $100,000 each from the town's capital improvement fund and undesignated fund, while borrowing $200,000.

David Joy of Joy & Hamilton Architects of Sanford evaluated the property for the town. His report described the proposal as a "real opportunity. It is one of the largest available parcels in the village area, it has ample useable land area properly zoned to serve town needs for some time to come, and it preserves significant frontage (almost 2,000 feet) on the Littlefield River and offers opportunities for conservation and passive recreation with in the village."

Twenty-four acres on the site cannot be developed, providing the chance to enhance and add to the trails on the property and other recreational activities, including a canoe and kayak launch on the Littlefield River, Joy said.

Recreational opportunities were raised during the special town meeting, but opponents noted a new town hall has dominated discussion among residents concerning the proposal.

The only controversy surrounding the special town meeting was a small war of words between selectmen and Rick Menelly, a New York resident who owns property in Alfred.

Menelly distributed information related to the proposal, information selectmen said was "full of errors, misstatements and just plain wrong information."

The dueling information was available for residents as handouts at the meeting.

Menelly questioned the need for a new town hall and described the town's debt service as being above average for Maine towns of similar size. Selectmen countered his information was an interpretation of data from a 2007 Maine Municipal Association survey based on the response of 41 percent of the cities and towns across the state.