After barely securing a place on the agenda, the Community Events Committee was kept alive by Town Meeting voters Monday night.

Voters decided to petition the state Legislature to give the Committee an annual funding source using a percentage of parking meter fees and hotel/motel excise tax receipts. The Community Events Committee provides promotional funds for community events, activities, projects, and programs “which are of mutual interest to the visitors and residents of the Town of Wareham.”

Onset Bay Association President Eleanor Martin said without this committee promoting local events, small businesses in town would suffer.

"It isn't just for the events. It's to bring people in and show them what a beautiful area it is so that they will come back," said Martin.

The Committee was established by a state Act in 2007 and funded with 70 percent of Wareham’s hotel/motel excise tax and 40 percent of the parking meter funds. But the act only granted the committee funding for the first year the group was formed. If the Committee couldn't get Town Meeting to fix this error, the group would have lost its funding.

"[The Act] appeared only to authorize that distribution from the parking meter funds to community events for the first year, which apparently was not intended at the time but was written and passed at the time," said Selectman Peter Teitelbaum at a previous Selectmen meeting. "So this is to cure that, essentially to legitimize their funding source."

The committee initially asked to receive 25 percent of parking meter fees and 20 percent of the town’s hotel/motel tax annually. The proposal also put a cap on the total amount the committee can receive at $60,000.

Teitelbaum suggested amending the cap to $45,000 instead of $60,000. Community Events Chair Susan Ricci-Sohn said the Committee spent an average of $48,174 on 15 to 16 events per year for the last five years.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan previously said that at the proposed funding levels (25 percent of parking funds and 20 percent of hotel/motel tax) the committee would receive about $35,000 based on the numbers for 2014. He anticipated by fiscal year 2016, the committee would receive about $57,000 using those percentages, thanks to increases from the parking kiosks and the new Marriott.

"In this fiscal climate where we're not replacing workers … I have a difficult time supporting up to $60,000 for this committee," said Teitelbaum.

Selectman Judith Whiteside said looking back at when the Committee was proposed in 2007, it was supposed to provide starter money for different events in town, not an annual advertising budget.

"I don't have a problem with the concept, but we are in a financial crisis," said Whiteside. "This was supposed to be seed money for these programs to grow."

Resident Bill Heaney said that he didn't like the "earmarks" represented by the set percentages the Committee would receive. He said he would prefer that the Committee competed for town funds and presented a budget to the Town Administrator like other town departments.

Selectman Steve Holmes disagreed with that assertion. He said the committee was founded "to boost and assist tourism in the town of Wareham" and bring revenue and people into the town. He said the committee was not meant to use money from town coffers, but from tourism dollars such as the hotel/motel tax and the parking meter funds.

In fact, the committee gave $21,000 to the town to establish the kiosk program in 2013.

"Without Community Events [Committee] there would be no parking kiosk revenue to the town," said Dominic Cammarano, member of the Finance Committee. "So I think the town owes this committee to continue operating and bringing tourism into the town."

Town Meeting voted to accept the amended maximum dollar amount of $45,000 by a vote of 150 to 71. Going just past 10 p.m., the last item completed on the first night of Fall Town Meeting, the item passed with an overwhelming majority.