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| Selectmen debate the merits of conceptual drawings of Town Hall brought forward by the Municipal Building Committee and LLB Architects at a meeting Jan. 10. Clockwise from left: Wade Holtzman, Julie Doucet, Peter Warren, Ron Ricci, Marie Sobalvarro, Tim Clark, Tim Bragan, and Pete Jackson. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
A divided Board of Selectmen said this week it was not ready to accept the recommendations of the Municipal Building Committee and asked members to come back with a more "thoroughly vetted" scheme for the renovation of Town Hall than the one it was ready to propose.
The decision came in a 3-2 vote Tuesday on a motion to instruct the committee to "refine" its preferred scheme for Town Hall so as to reduce the size of the addition it wants to add to the building.
Last week, the building committee voted for a design known as "Scheme 2," with a medium-sized addition, but promised to work to pare down its size and cost. Like all of its previous votes, it was unanimous.
But this week, the unanimity with which the building committee has seemingly progressed for the past several weeks showed signs of fracturing.
At a meeting prior to their appearance before Selectmen, members Lou Russo and Co-Chair Wade Holtzman said for the first time that they felt rushed and that the committee had acted too quickly. Russo said he regretted voting for "Scheme 2" without having had a chance to examine the latest set of drawings from LLB Architects, the committee's design firm. He said he had seen the designs and their relative costs for the first time last Thursday evening, just before LLB presented them. He said he thought the proper response would have been to hash out the plans as a committee before taking action and that subsequent work by LLB Architects had not reduced the size of the proposed addition in any significant way.
Russo moved to reconsider the choice of Scheme 2, but the motion was defeated in a 3-2 vote.
When the committee voted for Scheme 2, said Co-Chair Pete Jackson, it voted "to go downward from Scheme 2 to Scheme 1." He added, "We didn't say we were going to go all the way, but we didn't say we weren't going to go all the way."
"We're at a point in this process where we need to do some deliberation," insisted Russo.
The series of meetings that began last week with the Municipal Building Committee and ended Tuesday with the vote of Selectmen underscores the aggressive time table the committee has been asked to follow and how opposed some town officials remain to an expansion of Town Hall beyond its existing footprint. A flashpoint in that debate is whether to include a performance space and stage on the second floor of the building, but underlying that argument is a concern about cost.
According to the schedule prepared some weeks ago by onsite project manager John Sayre-Scibona, the recommendation delivered by the building committee to the Selectmen Tuesday night was right on time. Scheme 2 is one of three that had been presented to the building committee only six days earlier, and it was chosen by the committee in an open meeting of the group—a "transparent bubble," in the words of committee member Doug Coots—conducted by LLB architect Drayton Fair last Thursday.
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| Conceptual elevations by LLB Architects for the three Town Hall schemes discussed last Thursday night, along with very rough estimates of the cost of building each of them. |
In his presentation, Fair sketched out three possible schemes and their costs. The estimated costs, Fair told a packed Town Hall Meeting Room, were for the cost of construction only, and did not include other expenses that must be added to the final project estimate, such as contingencies for unforeseen problems, cost escalators for inflation as the economy recovers, and the so-called "soft costs" of furnishing and fitting out the building. The cost of relocating employees during construction was also omitted.
Still, by comparing estimates for the three schemes, LLB was able to show the relative differences to be expected among them. Here's the breakdown
- Scheme 1: Adding a "small" addition: attached directly to Town Hall with an entrance on its northwest corner and an elevator and stairs inside: $2.53 million.
- Scheme 2: Adding a "larger" addition: with a new glassed-in entrance located between the addition and Town Hall with an elevator and stairs within: $2.77 million.
- Scheme 3: Renovating the existing building, keeping the "historical" octagonal addition: $2.62 million.
In the discussion that followed, the building committee members spoke unanimously in favor of the Scheme 2 layout, but preferred the cost of Scheme 3 and the size of Scheme 1.
Co-Chair Wade Holtzman summed up the consensus at the time.
"We want Scheme 2 with a Scheme 3 price tag," he said. "We could call it Scheme 1.5."
The total cost of any one of the schemes will likely fall between $3.5 and $4.0 million, Fair said later in answer to a question from a member of the capital committee.
When it came time to vote, building committee Co-Chair Pete Jackson worded the motion as a vote for Scheme 2, with a commitment by the committee to "work hard" to bring its construction costs close to the cost of Scheme 1.
Selectman Ron Ricci told the group that the Board of Selectmen would "look favorably" on such a plan. At no time during last Thursday's meeting was there mention of the "statement of intent" of the Board of Selectmen, though all members of that board, except Bill Johnson, were present. Also present were the members of the Capital Planning and Investment Committee, candidates for the two vacant slots on the building committee, Finance Director Lorraine Leonard, and Town Administrator Tim Bragan.
By this week, however, what appeared to be a consensus among the Selectmen had deteriorated, with cost once again the issue of the day. Municipal Building Co-Chair Pete Jackson arrived at the Tuesday Selectmen's meeting bearing a fresh set of drawings for Scheme 2 from LLB Architects, which was still favored by a majority of the committee. But in the discussion that followed, Selectman Peter Warren said that while the meeting last week was "one of the best" he had ever seen, the new drawings showed an addition larger than what he had expected to see.
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| Bill Johnson comments that he thinks that town government would have all the space it needs if the performance space were to be sacrificed. |
Selectman Bill Johnson—who said he had seen the plans for the first time the previous day—and Ron Ricci also objected to the plan. They said they could not support it.
Ricci then moved to instruct the committee to return at a later date with a plan with total square footage that did not exceed that of Scheme 1. Scheme 1 is closer to the "statement of intent" adopted by the Board last spring, he said, and provides an additional 800 square feet to Town Hall, which he characterized as "a very generous expansion."
That motion, however, failed by a 3-2 vote, with board Chair Marie Sobalvarro and Selectmen Peter Warren and Tim Clark voting against it.
Sobalvarro then moved that the Selectmen "give direction to the MBC and the architect" to refine "Schemes 1 to 2 – 1.5, 1.7, 1.3, whatever you want to call it" and bring it back for final review after having been thoroughly vetted by the MBC."
In explaining why he would vote against the measure, Selectmen Bill Johnson said that he thought it a mistake to start with Scheme 2.
"I'd like to start with Scheme 1 and have [the MBC] convince me that the extra space is needed, as opposed to entrusting them to make it small," he said. "I'm just uncomfortable with that."
Earlier, with some passion, Johnson said that if the town was going to tear down the existing addition and build a new one, it should construct only the smallest addition needed "to meet town governance needs."
"Give up the upstairs large performance space; it is a luxury," he said, at a near shout. Use it for offices and volunteer meeting space, and thereby reduce the overall size of the addition, he added. "People are struggling in this town. We cannot act at this time to build anything other than the minimum–the absolute minimum we need for town governance."
"All of the space that town government has said it requires will fit within the existing Town Hall footprint," he added, "if we give up that performance space."
The new motion passed by a 3-2 vote, with Sobalvarro, Warren and Clark voting in favor, and Johnson and Ricci opposed. The motion sets no time limit, but building committee Co-Chair Jackson said he thought the committee could be ready to come back in two weeks.
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| Rich Marcello comments that he thinks that the level of contention among the members of the Board of Selectmen could be impeding the process. |
Building committee seats reduced to five
In other business Tuesday evening, Selectmen voted not to fill the two open seats on the building committee that have been vacant since the fall. Instead the board voted to reduce the size of the group to five members, making it easier for the group to achieve a quorum. Both votes were unanimous and were in line with an identical recommendation voted without objection by the seated members of the committee.
The six candidates who had volunteered for the committee were thanked and dismissed, but first invited to address Selectmen.
"I do think, having sat through all of this, that it seems like there's an awful lot of contention on this issue," said Rich Marcello of Pinnacle Road. "And I'm not sure you've actually gotten to the bottom of it yet. Perhaps that's an understatement. I'm not sure you've gotten to the bottom of it yet. And I think you're going to spin your wheels quite a bit because you haven't gotten to what the real emotional issue is."
Bill Marinelli, a former Selectman, warned the Selectmen not to approve a plan that created space likely to be left unused during normal business hours. "You'll have an elevator to nowhere," he said.
After their meeting with Selectmen, the five-members of the MBC–still formally in session—met outside Town Hall to set a new meeting date and then to adjourn. The committee will meet again this Friday, Jan. 13, at 8:32 a.m. to begin work on a fresh version of Scheme 2.