Renovation committee votes to go forward with cost estimate
By Caitlyn Kelleher

After a selectmen's meeting the night before, the Town Hall Renovations Committee met Tuesday, Oct. 17, and voted to continue with the current design.

Committee members Ronald Reed and Mary Coswell agreed that the committee needed to see the cost estimates for the designed renovation project that keeps all of the offices in the existing building and an addition, before considering using the Stevens Building as a town hall annex.

"We're still premature until we get the cost estimate from [architect] Kaffee Kang," Reed said. "We have to focus on today. I want to move forward with this project."

Committee member Jim Whidden proposed using the Stevens Building as an annex. That building is currently under a lease agreement by the Michael and Patricia Fredrick for a piano museum and study center.

To renovate that building the committee would have to go back to a town meeting for additional funds, even if the overall cost of the project is lower, because of the legal rules governing use of money.

"I don't think the voters will support that," said Town Administrator Kevin Paicos. "What Jim did was bring up an important idea."

Paicos said it might make more fiscal sense to use the Stevens Building, but that the politics will get in the way.

"It's not always the logical case that wins," he said. Whidden expressed a similar concern during the meeting.

"From every angle I can look at this it makes sense," he said of the annex. "You don't start with the politics and say where do we go. ... (Politics) that is the biggest reason this town hasn't made progress on a lot of things."

Many members of the committee thought the idea of the annex was good, but were concerned about delaying the project.

"I wouldn't want to throw the idea away," Coswell said.

She, like Reed, Whidden and Tim Dumont, hope that the selectmen conduct a feasibility study on that building and the VMS Building, which will be empty when a new public safety building is constructed.

David Sargent expressed his concern about the extent of the annex idea.

"It's not in our purview," he said. "We're making our job harder looking 10 years down the road. We're putting the cart before the horse. ... Let the next town administrator and the next board of selectmen worry about that."

Paicos said the Stevens Building will still be reviewed by town officials considering the town is the landlord.

In other business:

 The committee voted to stop considering three trailer bids because the costs were too high. The bids came in at $194,000, $214,000 and $482,000, according to Paicos.

Paicos said a group of town hall employees will be working with the interim town administrator to come up with a more affordable option that would take less money out of the budget.