Bruce Doten tried just about everything to deter Tisbury voters from their free-spending ways at Wednesday night’s annual town meeting.

He cited Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s dark views of the state of the economy. He quoted dead Presidents. He claimed the town was breaking the law by spending so much. He rebuked Tisbury parents for the way they raised their children.

All to no effect. Voters agreed overwhelmingly to almost everything on the huge warrant. In particular, they resoundingly rejected Mr. Doten’s call for them not to spend more than half a million dollars to fix up Veterans’ Memorial Park sports fields.

So his intervention got nowhere, but it did provide the theatrical highlight to a very long — more than five hours, over two nights — but generally uncontroversial annual meeting.

Mr. Doten, it should be said, was not alone in opposing the resurfacing of the park, which is probably the most-used sporting facility on the Island, but which has become such an injury hazard to those who play on its hard and uneven surface that members of the town financial and advisory committee fear the consequences of large compensation claims.

Selectman Tom Pachico argued strongly against the project when it first came up on Tuesday night, as part of an article which sought to put $96,750 from the community preservation fund toward a sprinkler system.

“Why would you spend $97,000 to irrigate a wetland?” he asked.

But Dave Ferraguzzi said the park, which is indeed reclaimed wetland, became “hard as a brick” in the summer.

There followed considerable back-and-forth discussion of the technical aspects of the plan, much of it between Mr. Pachico and department of public works director Fred LaPiana, who played Little League there in their youth.

Mr. Pachico tried to strike out the item, but failed. Voters not only agreed to spend the CPA funds, but also later the balance of the $590,000 cost of the project.

It seemed the matter was settled. But the following night, Mr. Doten rose to move the meeting reconsider the issue, in the light of comments by reserve chairman Bernanke’s alleged comments that the United States was headed for recession. (In fact, Mr Bernanke conspicuously avoided saying the R word, in his testimony before the Joint Economic Committee.)

Mr. Doten said the spending led the town precipitously into a Proposition 2 1/2 override, which he suggested was somehow illegal. He claimed the dangerous measure was contemplated only because people thought they were doing the right thing by their kids.

But, he said “we can best serve our young people by not breaking the law.”

He described the proposal as “egregious” and “preposterous.” He obscurely cited Thomas Jefferson’s views on liberty and government. He said parents today were so eager to be friends to their children that they were prepared to break the law for them.

He lamented the stain being put on taxpayers and the economy by such spending.

In response, Mr. Ferraguzzi said the billions spent on wars was what was straining the economy, and also cited Lincoln in support of the project, saying it was representative of government of the people by the people.

The vote against Mr. Doten’s motion was overwhelming, and so the park will be rebuilt.

And while Mr. Bernanke is almost certainly unaware of the memorial park debate, he would probably approve, as he is touting economic stimulus. As finance committee member Jon Snyder noted yesterday after the meeting, most of the work on the park will be contracted here and help stimulate the local economy.

Apart from that one, there were a few of other contentious moments, several of them related to proposals involving the harbor master John M. (Jay) Wilbur. He was denied $1,800 for design work on some improvements to his office at Owen Park; there was brief debate about his choice of wood (white oak) for new pilings for the Owen park jetty and his plan spend $60,000 to design and install a new mooring grid near the Lagoon Pond ramp was defeated 53-51 in the closest vote of the meeting.

There was spirited debate about whether Sail Martha’s Vineyard should get $32,750 from the community preservation fund to build four historic flat-bottomed boats, on the basis of whether newly-constructed boats of old design were truly historic. A finance committee motion to strike the item failed, and people voted to fund the boats.

But the expenditures the meeting rejected were few and mostly small. Voters even agreed to spend money on things they had rejected last year. Thus $70,000 will be spent fixing up the exterior of the police station and $50,000 will go toward new sidewalks on William street.

The remarkably large amount spent on policing a generally peaceful and law abiding town also continued to grow. Although there were a couple of questions about why some stand-alone expenditures were not included in the department’s general budget, police chief John R. Cashin fended them off with humour, saying at one point it was all part of his goal of having “200 police in Tisbury by 2010.”

He also seemed to agree with Margaret Wolontis, when she complained — on one of her many interventions in various discussions — about spending $50,000 on summer traffic control.

Her experience, she said, was that whenever there was a traffic jam, a traffic officer was the cause.

Chief Cashin said he was reminded of an old saying that there was no situation so dire it could not be worsened by a policeman.

But he got the money.

And there was what looked like a brief outbreak of politicking as two competitors in the upcoming selectmen’s election, Tom Pachico and Jeff Kristal locked horns during discussion about whether the town should urge the land bank to buy a small parcel of harborfront land known as Boch Park.

Mr. Kristal said he believed the owner of the lot, Ernest Boch, had plans to improve the lot. Mr. Pachico doubted that anything would happen, as he had waited three years for Mr. Kristal to facilitate a meeting on the matter and “nothing ever materialized.”

The candidates’ debate was cut short, though, and the town will urge the land bank to look at acquiring the property, although it appears likely the land bank will not do so.

The $19.8 million budget went through with only a couple of questions.

And nothwithstanding the apparent view of Mr. Doten and his couple of supporters that the two-night meeting had become something of a spend-a-thon, when it all ended a bit after 10 p.m. on Wednesday, there was still enough left in the town’s unreserved fund balance to put $1.2 million toward reducing the tax rate.