Harvard’s Annual Town Meeting today approved the $3.97 million plan of the Municipal Building Committee to renovate Town Hall.

The two-thirds vote in favor of the project came after roughly an hour of debate, in which there were few verbal fireworks and none of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that characterized a similar argument over how to proceed with “conceptual” designs for the Town Hall, Hildreth House, and the old library last year.

Roughly 300 residents were present when Town Moderator Bob Eubank called for the vote at 11:40 a.m., and after surveying the raised the pink cards of the “yeas” and “nays,” he declared, “this article passes.”

The measure asks the town to appropriate $3.97 million to produce detailed designs and bid documents for construction of the “schematic” design for Town Hall developed by the five-member building committee over the past six months. The money for the project will be raised by a 20-year municipal bond, with $1 million of the principal and interest paid for with money from the town’s Community Preservation fund and the rest by an increase in the property tax.

Now that the Town Meeting attendees have approved it, the plan to pay for the project must clear one last hurdle. A simple majority of Harvard’s registered voters must vote on Tuesday to exclude the additional debt from the maximum 2.5 percent increase in taxes per year that is allowed by the state. Finance Committee member Rudy Minar, speaking in favor of the funding, said the impact on the average tax bill would be “less than the cost of having your child participate in a school sport.”

In his presentation to Town Meeting, building committee co-Chair Pete Jackson said today that if the ballot question succeeds, detailed design could begin immediately. Bid documents could be ready by the fall, and construction could start before Christmas.

“This time [April] next year,” said Jackson, “the project could be 30 percent complete.”

Few rose to speak in opposition to the article today. Bruce Leicher, of Warren Avenue, said that although he supported the plan, he was disappointed with the process that led to it.

“We’ve had two dueling committees, [the Selectmen and the Municipal Building Committee], that haven’t gotten along,” he said.

“I think you want to have your architect and your building committee in an advisory role, not in a management role,” Leicher said, and he proposed an amendment to specify that design and construction would “be under the direction of the Board of Selectmen.”

Keith Turner of Littleton County Road, however, objected, saying that the change would remove the “professional experts” of the building committee “from helping to manage the project” and give responsibility for managing it to “the same political body that has caused all kinds of controversy and conflict and slowdown and tangential running away from this project.”

When Turner paused in his oration, Moderator Eubank interrupted.

“I get your point,” he said. “The amendment is to direct the project. It does not mean the Municipal Building Committee would not be involved.”

Although the Board of Selectmen accepted the change as a friendly amendment, Eubank called for a vote “to hear the will of the town,” and an overwhelming majority – on both sides of the question—rejected the motion.

“We’ve gone through a lot of process, some of it fairly well spirited,” said Billy Salter, of Elm Street, who urged passage of the Town Hall article. “One of the problems with projects like this is that there are inevitably tradeoffs. If we fund this, we’ll have less money for other stuff. There are also tradeoffs between what people think is really important.”

“It’s not that one set of people is right and the other set of people is wrong, it’s that there’s a tradeoff,” Salter said.

Salter was addressing a principal concern of the capital committee and other opponents. Earlier, capital committee chair George McKenna said that with $15 million of capital projects queued up in its plan, a rising operating budget and a looming liability for the pensions of town employees and teachers, the Town Hall project was too ambitious.