LIMINGTON — Minutes before a vote on whether to cut the town’s emergency medical service budget by $21,000, about one-fifth of the residents on hand for the town’s annual town meeting Saturday suddenly walked out.

While the nearly hour-long discussion on the pros and cons of funding a professional emergency medical squad had grown heated, it wasn’t voter frustration but a call for help with an oven fire on Cape Road that triggered the mass exodus. Firefighters and emergency medical technicians rushed out of the Limington Municipal Complex to get to the fire.

“You are losing 10 votes,” firefighter Chris Decapua reminded other voters on his way out.

Such are the highs and lows of Maine’s town meeting season, when thousands of citizens troop into school auditoriums and meeting houses for their annual exercise in grass roots democracy. The meetings are characterized by drawn-out discussions, often over the expenditure of a few thousand dollars, occasionally punctuated by moments of drama or eloquence.

It is a process that allows everyone to have their say at length, as long as they stay on topic. It takes a certain civic commitment to sit through what often stretches into a daylong event.

“I used to go more often but people are too long-winded,” said Dianne Sellick, who showed up this year to help at the Limington Historical Society’s baked goods table.

The town meeting, in practice since Colonial times, is the dominant form of municipal government in New England. In Maine more than 400 of the state’s 492 cities and towns are governed by town meetings where residents get together in one spot to work out the issues.

This year Limington residents were being asked to approve a $1.5 million budget, up by about $1,000 from the year before. While residents were united in their applause for a new salt shed that was completed under budget last year, they were divided on the subject of spending. Much of the meeting focused on whether to keep services intact or the tax rate flat.

A similar discussion is taking place at town meetings across the state, said Eric Conrad, spokesman for the Maine Municipal Association.

“State revenue-sharing and federal funds are down dramatically, most costs are being shifted to municipalities — unfairly in our view — and local leaders are struggling to provide necessary services while keeping property taxes as low as possible,” Conrad said.

Limington’s town meeting is a classic example of the system. Only a fraction of Limington’s 2,200 registered voters turn out, this year about 50 people, half of them elected officials or town employees. A half dozen voices dominate the discussion while the majority are content to stay silent except to vote, another common characteristic.

At least one epithet was heard and several voices were raised, also par for the course, despite the efforts of meeting moderator Joyce Foley, elected just moments earlier, to keep the debate civil and moving forward.

Tammy Ramsdell urged her fellow citizens to cut unnecessary spending in the emergency medical service budget.

“Why are we all here? Are we just here to say yes to everything?” she said.

Howard Allen represented the opposing viewpoint.

“I get tired of this discussion every year. We either want them and respect their value” or we don’t, Allen said.

In the end, voters made no changes to the emergency medical service budget.

The firefighters and emergency medical technicians returned, and the discussion turned to the Davis Memorial Library budget.

Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

bquimby@pressherald.com