Town Hall Renovation Passes Town Meeting Muster

With no discussion or debate, voters at Tuesday night's Special Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved a $6.1 million Town Hall renovation.

In all, voters dealt with 14 warrant articles in a little over an hour. Twelve articles pased, all but one unanimously, just one failed and one was withdrawn.

Support for the $6.1 million Town Hall project was not unanimous, but the 55-14 vote was well more than the two-thirds needed for passage. Nancy Reed, chairman of the Community Preservation Committee, which has spearheaded the renovation effort, said she was pleased and not surprised by the vote.

"I think we did a good job getting the information out to the public," said Reed. "There were plenty of public hearings and information got out through the news media."

A key aspect to the project, which will expand usable space and make the building ADA compliant,  is that the initial $1.5 million investment will come from Community Preservation funds and the remaining $4.6 million will be a bond paid back through future Community Preservation funds.
Next up for the project will be for the design phase to be completed and to hire a project manager.

"We won't be looking to stat construction until next spring at the absolute earliest," said Reed.

In other business:

Article 13, which would have authorized borrowing money for water main repair work on River road and Carter Street, was withdrawn. According to town manager Richard Montuori, the time was not right for the warrant article.

"It's a project that still needs to be done," said Montuori. "But it will be down the road, some time later."

Article 12 was approved unanimously, authorizing expenditures for water treatment facility and water system improvements.

Also approved was Article 7, which sets up a revolving account to pay for storm water and drainage system work. The fund is capped at $50,000 and is built with fines from local polluters.

Shawsheen Avenue and Birchwood Road Extension were approved as public ways, though questions were raised as to whether Shawsheen Avenue was too close in name to Shawsheen Street, as to cause potential emergency response problems.

Fowler, speaking as a member of the Planning Board, said Shawsheen Avenue had actually been around as a private way for nearly a century and that a name change was beyond the scope of the Special Town Meeting article.