LINCOLN — Voters won’t be asked if they want to abolish the annual Financial Town Meeting after all, as the Town Council committee responsible for approving the question didn’t approve it.

The council’s three-member Ordinance Committee failed to endorse the question last week, in effect killing the referendum. Committee member John W. Flynn made a motion to endorse a question asking if voters wanted to replace the Financial Town Meeting with a system that called for Town Council approval of the town budget, but neither of the other two members of the committee, Councilmen James R. Jahnz and Keith E. Macksoud, would second it.

Jahnz opposition was not a surprise, as he had spoken against putting the question on the ballot last month when it was discussed at a full council meeting. But at that time, Macksoud said, while he wasn’t taking a position for or against the town meeting, he favored letting the voters decided the question.

But Macksoud said yesterday he changed his mind because he felt that Flynn’s plan, as proposed, had too many details that needed to be worked out and, with the deadline for submission to the secretary of state’s office approaching, there was not enough time to resolve them.

Macksoud said he felt it was unclear how a budget would be implemented if the town administrator vetoed it, and he found other references to the Financial Town meeting in the Town Charter that might have to be reviewed for impact if the meeting itself were abolished.

“I’ve always been in favor, when it comes up, of putting the final say in the voters’ hands,” Macksoud said. “But the way it was written, there were too many questions.”

Flynn said he was disappointed by the outcome. He said he had expected Macksoud to support sending it to the council for final approval and then to the voters. But as the discussion went on and on, he said it became clear his fellow committee members were not going to come around, saying the other two “talked it to death.”

Jahnz said he felt the town meeting, attended by town voters, was a better way to approve the budget than turning it over the five-member council.

“It’s the people’s direct voice,” he said. Jahnz said the council should spend the next year looking for ways to improve the town meeting method, rather than throwing it out.

The referendum was proposed after this year’s Financial Town Meeting, when an unexpected motion from the floor added $517,000 to the school budget that was recommended by the town Budget Board.

Opponents of the Financial Town Meeting system said it was a perfect example of how a mobilized minority could seize control of the process for its own interests. School Committee members observed that when a motion from the floor called for a school budget cut, that was the will of the people, but when it was for an increase, it was a political hijacking.

jhill@projo.com