STANDISH – Following the June 10 defeat of a bundled $1.3 million bond package by Standish voters, town councilors are considering re-submitting parts of the wide-ranging package as separate referendum questions this fall.

June’s failed referendum would have funded a variety of public works and public safety capital expenditures, including fire hydrants, cardiac equipment, pavement maintenance and parking lot repairs, as well as matching funds toward a 1.3-mile sidewalk project located along Route 25 in downtown Standish. Voters rejected the question 711-540. Prior to the vote, a new group called, “Stop the Bundling,” criticized the council for presenting the capital improvement bonds as a single package.

At a July 1 meeting, the capital improvements committee, composed of councilors Phil Pomerleau, Mike Blanck and John Sargent, recommended that the full council re-submit several referendum questions in a September special election. According to Blanck, the committee recommended a separate question for each municipal department’s set of bond requests. They also recommended that the council delay the vote on sidewalk bonds until November’s gubernatorial election.

“Sidewalks were the most contentious issue at the last referendum and that’s why we feel that that referendum didn’t pass,” Blanck said. “We just want to put that to rest for a while and just get everything passed that the town needs to operate with.”

The Town Council is scheduled to vote on the follow-up referendum question on Tuesday. Blanck and Town Manager Gordon Billington say the committee recommended the alternative approach in response to the apparent widespread opposition to bundling.

“That’s what they heard,” Billington said. “People did not like the bundling.”

Dan Kasprzyk, leader of the Stop the Bundling campaign, said that although he was pleased by the prospects that the council would subdivide the referendum, he remained concerned that the council may not have gone far enough.

“Based on what I see, on first blush, it appears to me that the unbundling has been partially met, but not necessarily completely,” Kasprzyk said.

According to Billington, the town has typically bundled referendum votes in the past. After the town adopted its charter in 1987, the council presented bundled referenda until 2010. In 2011, former Councilor Lou Stack requested that the town unbundle that year’s referendum. From 2011-2013, the town submitted unbundled referendum questions, Billington said.

When asked why the town is continuing to pursue matching funds toward the Village Center sidewalk project, which has failed at referendum three years in a row, Billington compared the effort to the struggle for gay-marriage rights in Maine.

“When did the state give up on gay rights?” Billington said. “How many years did that take, eight years, before the state was finally mentally brought around to where the prevailing wisdom was, ‘Yeah, that seems to be the right thing to do.’ ”