Voters went to the polls in Takoma Park Tuesday with a number of issues on their minds, but ironically, it was the new Community Center — the place where they cast their votes — that many said was an important issue in this year’s election.

Some called it a debacle and a fiasco, while a few said it was a scandal, plain and simple.

‘‘I’m very concerned that it went way over budget, and that there didn’t seem to be an understanding of the issues,” said Ward 3 voter Claudine Schweber as she left the polls in the Community Center’s new Computer Learning Center. She specifically mentioned that the building is on a 100-year flood plain, yet that fact wasn’t realized until after plans had been made for construction.

The resulting floodwater mitigation efforts added $750,000 to the price tag for the building, which will end up costing more than $12 million.

The floodplain ‘‘couldn’t have been a secret,” Schweber said. ‘‘There must have been maps, there must have been details.”

She also took issue with the size of the project, which included an addition on the front of what used to be the Municipal Building. ‘‘There’s only 17[,000] or 18,000 people here, and I don’t think we need this huge city hall. It feels overbearing, like it belongs in a bigger community.”

Karen Taylor of Ward 6 also cited the ‘‘Community Center debacle” as being on her mind as she cast her ballot. ‘‘I think more needed to be done to bring together consensus before ground was broken,” she said.

Others, having their first opportunity to see the Community Center up close, commented on the exterior appearance of the building, including the large open-air parking lot in front of the building’s basement level and the lack of finishing details.

There were several voters, however, who expressed excitement about being able to begin using the Community Center. Lillian Smith, a new resident who lives in the Victory Tower retirement community in Ward 1, said she is happy the center is open.

‘‘I’m just really looking forward to the new senior programs,” she said. ‘‘I know that I am going to love living here.”

The Community Center became one of several issues discussed in the city’s contested mayoral race, which pitted four-term incumbent Mayor Kathy Porter against Seth Grimes, a small business owner who lives and works in Old Town. While Porter admitted the construction project had its share of problems and that she was in the best position to continue working to resolve them, Grimes cited the Community Center as an example of poor city management and used the situation to make his case for a change in leadership on the City Council.

In a city which seems to have grown unaccustomed to contested elections — only two of the seven council seats were contested two years ago — the Porter⁄Grimes match up and another contested race in Ward 2 put a number of other issues in the minds of voters this year, chief among them the need to find the correct balance between city- and county-provided services. Because of the way state law structures the relationship between Montgomery County and Takoma Park, city residents pay taxes to both the city and county for local services, in spite of the fact that Takoma Park is itself a full-service city.

The situation, known as municipal tax duplication, was one of the areas studied by the Residents’ Committee on Tax and Service Duplication Issues, which presented a detailed report to the City Council in April.

Peter Kovar, a voter from Ward 1, said that instead of focusing first on cutting taxes, the city needs to decide which services it wants to provide, and which it is willing to return to Montgomery County, and only then figure out how to pay for them.

‘‘Would you say, ‘Things aren’t working out, so I’m going to cut my salary, and then figure out how to make things work?’ ” he asked hypothetically, using an unlikely household situation to illustrate his point.

In evaluating the mayoral candidates, Kovar said both presented good platforms, and that he looked at their philosophical approaches instead of their positions on one or two key issues.

Voter turnout early Tuesday morning seemed lighter than in previous years, with a slow but steady number of residents arriving at the Community Center. Electioneering zones were setup in both the front and rear of the building, and campaign signs lined Maple and Philadelphia avenues as candidates and their supporters stumped for last-minute votes among the undecided.

In addition to flyers and brochures from the candidates, campaign workers also passed out information about an advisory referendum on this year’s ballot pertaining to instant-runoff voting. The City Council approved the ballot question last month to gauge residents’ support of the voting method that would allow people to rank their choices in city elections where three or more candidates sought the same office.

Using instant-runoff voting, if a candidate doesn’t receive at a majority of the votes, the person who received the fewest number of votes is eliminated and the ballots recounted, effectively providing an instant runoff to determine which candidate receives a majority.

‘‘I just think it makes sense to say that someone has to have more than 50 percent of the vote to win,” said Ward 3 voter Elizabeth Olson.

Victor Thuronyi of Ward 1 also supported IRV: ‘‘I think it’s another way that we’re showing that Takoma Park is setting the lead for other cities.” Thuronyi also said the city’s paper ballots, approved by the City Council during the summer, were easy to use.

The council instituted paper ballots for this year’s election in part to save money and promote civic involvement in the election. But the paper ballots also underscored the council’s displeasure with electronic voting machines that don’t have a verifiable ‘‘paper trail” in the form of printed receipts for voters.

Although there were initially some concerns about having enough election judges to count the paper ballots, for the first time in recent memory, the city actually had to turn away judges because so many people submitted their names for consideration.

More than anything, those who showed up during the early hours of voting Tuesday said they were there because they had an obligation to do so.

‘‘What has bothered me is that recently I saw in the news that the percentage of people voting in America is way below other countries that allow you to vote,” said Ellen Bunyan, a resident of Ward 5. ‘‘I felt that it was my duty to come out, even though I thought instant-runoff voting had a good chance of passing and that [unopposed Ward 5 Councilman] Marc Elrich had a good chance of winning. It really is my duty to come out.”