Town Meeting voters passed a $57.4 million budget, established a junk license committee, authorized a cemetery land purchase and more Monday, as Town Meeting was completed in just one night.

Town officials stressed that the budget was not what everyone wanted, but was the best budget that could be created given the circumstances.

"Without new revenue resources, the budget and services are going to continue to deteriorate," Selectman Patrick Tropeano said.

The $57.4 million budget for fiscal year 2016 represented a $1.6 million increase from this year's number. There were 178 voters present at the beginning of the meeting, meeting the 150-member mark necessary to vote on financial items.

The budget includes an $822,583 increase to general government departments, which totals $10.5 million in the budget and a just over $250,000 increase to the Schools, which account for $27.1 million in the budget.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said he was able to fund additional police officers and an additional Municipal Maintenance employee in the budget. Sullivan also said he was able to increase the library budget to $177,748, from last year's figure of $124,839.

The amount of library funding was the only issue in the budget that raised any concern from the members who voted it through nearly unanimously.

Johnna Fredrickson, member of the Wareham Library Board of Trustees, said that with the new budget, the library will barely be able to maintain its current level of reduced services, and would likely make further cuts to children's events.

In other events:

Town Meeting unanimously voted to establish a committee to to develop a new junk dealer bylaw with the intention of presenting an item to Fall Town Meeting in October.

The issue with junk dealer licenses began when Selectman Steve Holmes recently discovered a number of junk dealers operating in town without a license. He spurred Selectmen to propose a bylaw change to Town Meeting to increase the number of licenses in town from five to 25.

After looking more closely at the issue, however, Selectmen came to realize that anyone who sold secondhand items, by law, was required to have a junk dealer license. This meant the Salvation Army, consignment shops, church thrift shops, even places like Game Stop, which sells secondhand video games, all require a license.

Selectmen estimated over 60 businesses were affected. Selectmen agreed that something needs to be done, but that the bylaw change needs to be refined so it won't delegitimize dozens of businesses that didn't even realize thy were involved in this matter.

"It's a bad bylaw, because it's far too restrictive," Selectman Peter Teitelbaum said.

The committee will be comprised of the police chief (or his designee), a member of the Planning Board and three citizens.

Town Meeting voters also authorized the purchase of land to expand the Agawam Cemetery. The item passed with near unanimous support, the only dissent coming from some members of the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee, in the minority opinion of the board, stated, "Wareham would be better served with this land staying on the tax rolls and the Cemetery Commissioners using their current resources to catch up on maintenance needs and initiate plans to build a mausoleum."

Cemetery Commissioner Deborah Rose said that there is no more room at the the other town cemeteries and that the reason for the purchase is to build a mausoleum in the future.

Town Meeting voters also approved a "home rule" petition that would ask the state Legislature to count the 1,100 manufactured homes in town as affordable housing.

State law Chapter 40B, designed to encourage the development of housing affordable to low-and moderate-income people, penalizes communities in which less than 10 percent of the housing stock is considered affordable, by allowing developers to avoid local regulations if constructing affordable housing.

Because of Chapter 40B’s definition of affordable housing, Wareham has never met the 10 percent threshold. If the roughly 1,100 units in the town’s mobile home parks were to be considered affordable housing, the town would meet the 10 percent requirement.

Town Meeting voters also approved three Community Preservation Fund items. The state Community Preservation Act was adopted by Wareham voters in April 2002. The funds come from a 3 percent surcharge levied on residential property, above the first $100,000 of assessed property. The state partially matches the locally raised funds. The money must be used for historic preservation, affordable housing, preservation of open space or recreation.

Voters approved $100,000 for the reconstruction of the 12th Street Onset Boat Ramp, located at 27 East Boulevard.

"I think we have an irreparable ramp right now," said Harbormaster Garry Buckminster.

He said installing the new ramp would create lower maintenance costs than continued repairs to the current ramp. Buckminster was able to secure $67,500 in outside grants to offset the cost of the $167,500 project.

Voters also approved $90,000 for the construction of three new tennis courts on Wareham school grounds. According to girls tennis coach and school committee member Geoff Swett, most other schools in the South Coast Conference have at least five or six courts. He said the extra courts would be open to the public, as the three current courts are, and that it would give gym classes and tennis teams more playing opportunities.

The project received $90,000 in private funding that was contingent on $90,000 coming from CPA funds.

The third CPA project funded by Town Meeting was $45,000 for the rehabilitation of the Oakdale playground. A Playground Rehabilitation Fund was established at Town Meeting last fall to restore existing playgrounds in the town.

"The community support for this particular project has been overwhelming and that is the primary reason Open Space Committee chose to do the Oakdale playground as the first in our rehab of 21 playgrounds," said Sandy Slavin, the chair of the Open Space Committee, at a previous meeting.