The Future (And Past) Of Amherst Town Hall Repairs

Amherst Town Hall could have been a collapsed mess if major damage hadn’t been discovered in time.

The building closed and underwent around $12,000 of emergency repairs in November after an unanticipated amount of damage was found in its roof structure. Multiple beams were installed that run through the entire building in order to support the roof and prevent collapse.

Now the Amherst Board of Selectmen are preparing for more repair work to be done next year. The board has proposed a $200,000 capital reserve fund to repair, but this cost could be lowered for taxpayers. A separate article would take $87,000 out of the Land Use Change Tax Fund and us it towards the repair expenses.

DPW director Bruce Berry said that repairs had been planned for summer 2013 to fix the damage of years and years of water leaking through the ceiling. However, Glenn Dodge of Dodgeco, a colonial architecture, design and engineering firm, found in November that the damage had worsened unexpectedly over the summer. 

Much of the damage had been hidden by insulation, but its unveiling meant that the town had to take action, because a large snowstorm could have led to a roof collapse.

The money used for the emergency repairs came out of the town’s building repair budget, which is available for all eight municipal buildings. It has been used on other unexpected needs, such as a new leach field septic system at the police department. That fund is about halfway spent at this point, according to Berry.

“Sometimes things crop up and have to realign priorities,” he said. “ There are expenses that come up and you have to deal with them.”

The work done during the emergency repairs was what would have been done this summer, according to Berry, it just had to be done earlier than expected.

Amherst Town Hall was built in 1825 and has had to undergo repairs and renovations since then. The area around the chimney was repaired in 1998, but the biggest changes happened more recently.

A total of $664,161.68 was spent between 2003-2006 to renovate the first floor and sprinkler system while upgrading the building’s wiring and data processing capabilities. Town hall’s cellar was built to add more space in the building, and a new leach field and septic system was added.

No work had been done on the second floor during this time. 

Berry said that future repairs to town hall should ensure the safety of town employees and citizens, and are high priority.

“We have to maintain a safe building to do town business.”