A proposed amendment to the town of Windham’s land use ordinance failed to win enough votes on Tuesday.

Windham residents voted down a mineral extraction amendment 4,402 to 2,128. Proponents said the amendment would have protected Windham residential neighborhoods from unwanted rock and gravel quarries while opponents said the amendment would have threatened property development rights.

The most vocal proponent of the amendment was Margaret Pinchbeck, resident of 9 Nash Road. Pinchbeck lives in a home that would overlook a quarry that developer Peter Busque, of Busque Construction Inc., has preliminary approval to build at the intersection of Nash Road and Route 302.

When Pinchbeck first heard about Busque proposed quarry operation last winter, she managed to slow the progression of the planning board approval process for Busque’s quarry. She quickly formed a cohesive association with her Nash Road neighbors as well as others in town who were afraid that quarries could be built anywhere in Windham because of the lax nature of Windham’s land use ordinances. One result of Pinchbeck and the neighbors’ resistance to the quarry was the reinvigoration of an ordinance review committee that is now working to comprehensively review the town’s land use rules.

With the amendment’s failure Tuesday, much of the neighbors’ concerns regarding the Busque quarry are still on the table, despite Busque’s plans to change his plans to appease the neighbors. Busque said he plans to limit blasting time to between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. He also will extend a vegatative buffer that approaches 750 feet in some spots, an amount he says “is way over” what is required.

“Yes, I feel for them, I don’t want to devalue their property. But I don’t think it will have any negative impact on them. It’s going to be a top-notch operation. I doubt anyone will even know I am in there,” Busque said.

Busque and other land developers such as Kenneth Grondin and Tim Tandberg formed an association of their own to fight the proposed amendment. Their main point of contention with the amendment was that it didn’t merely change future land use decisions in the town of Windham, they were mostly concerned that it was retroactive to Jan. 1, 2005. For Busque, that aspect of the amended ordinance would have affected his quarry plans. The retroactivity in the ordinance, Grondin and Tandberg said, were dangerous precedents for the entire state.

“It’s a great thing. The people have spoken. I think it was the retroactivity that killed it,” Busque said. “The amendment was unfair. You can’t change the rules after someone buys a property and has already invested thousands in it, like I did.”

Busque said he spent $1.75 million for the 100-plus-acre Nash Road site. Experienced with working with surrounding towns’ planning boards, Busque said the average cost of getting his projects approved is $75,000. So far, he’s spent $190,000 on this project alone.

“She’s cost me a lot of money, I’ll give her that,” Busque said of Pinchbeck.

Pinchbeck, a mild-mannered woman who makes Christmas wreaths out of her barn in the fall, would be happier if the ordinance had passed but is satisfied with the effort she and her fellow petitioners put forth.

“I’m tired. But I’m really glad with the turnout. There’s so much voter apathy out there. I’m so proud of the voters who turned out,” she said.

Pinchbeck blamed the loss on a lack of money and some confusion at the polls.

“We’ve been hearing that people were confused when reading the question,” Pinchbeck said. “They didn’t know if they were voting for or against the ordinance by the way the question read. One lady was almost in tears because she thought she checked the wrong answer.”

At the poll Tuesday afternoon, Windham resident Jane Sullivan said she was “totally confused” by the wording of the amendment.

“What I couldn’t understand was whether I was voting for the old ordinance or for the new amendment. I’m against the old and for the new. So I wrote ‘against’ the old ordinance, which is opposite of how I wanted to vote,” she said.

Pinchbeck also felt the anti-amendment side co-opted the idea that property rights were at stake. Initially, Pinchbeck got involved because she believed her quality of life and property value would be severely harmed because of a dirty, dusty, noisy quarry moving in as a neighbor. She felt she had to defend her property rights in response. But, it ended up to be the other side, including developers and local real estate brokers and agents, who successfully forwarded the idea of property rights.

“It’s the retroactive zoning that I’m opposed to,” said Linda Griffin, owner of Pleasant River Properties in Windham. “It’s illegal and immoral. You can’t go back and change zoning once someone has purchased a property and has gone through the approval process. I want to protect property rights. This affects everyone.”

While the Nash Road neighbors may have lost this round with the quarry, Pinchbeck remains hopeful that the quarry may still be voted down during the upcoming Windham Town Council review.

“This next council meeting, we’re coming up on part four of the Busque hearings. It should be interesting,” she said.