Preston – A special town meeting will be held at Town Hall Thursday to vote on two proposed spending items, including whether to raise the minimum spending amount that would require a referendum vote.

The Board of Finance in October 2015 voted to recommend that the minimum expenditure that would require a referendum be raised from the current $100,000 to $175,000. But the issue never made it to a town meeting agenda, and board members discussed the issue again last month and reminded First Selectman Robert Congdon to schedule the proposal for a town meeting vote.

The town meeting Thursday will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Board of Finance Chairman Norman Gauthier said the $100,000 minimum for a referendum was established by ordinance in 1995. Prior to that, all spending items in town – including the annual school and town budgets – were decided by town meeting votes.

Gauthier recalled that residents increasingly were asking that spending items be put to a paper ballot, a tedious task at a town meeting. Two ordinances were approved, one to automatically send all annual budgets to referendum and one to require referendum for any expenditures of $100,000 or more.

“The $100,000 figure has served us well for 20 years, and hopefully the $175,000 will serve us for another 20 years,” Gauthier said.

The second item on the agenda would authorize spending up to $40,000 to allow the Board of Education to purchase a nine-passenger van to replace contracted special education transportation service costing $200 to $300 per day.

The funding for the van would come from capital funding previously approved for other projects, but not needed, including the purchase of three full-size school buses. The three 65-passenger buses ended up costing $239,007, nearly $36,000 less than the $275,000 authorized for the purchase.

Gauthier said several other purchases came in under budget, leaving a total of $58,367 in available for capital projects, but the purchases would have to be approved at a town meeting.

c.bessette@theday.com