Letter: Council Must Listen to Taxpayers before Vacating Town Hall

To the editor:

What can we expect the architects to report on the review of the Town Hall?

I expect the architects to report exactly what the Town Council majority wants on the report. They are the customer and they will tell them what to have on the report. This is what we have received from the town’s building inspector and fire marshal. There are items on the list of violations that have existed for over twenty years. It has turned out that the issues are not an emergency and the majority of which have already been repaired. It is interesting that the wrong building code was used by the building inspector. He used the code for new buildings not the one that is used for historic structures.

You can expect that the report will be higher than market price to have the work completed. Why, because the architects typically do CYA on estimates to protect themselves and they don’t have real world knowledge of market prices. When the town hired Newport Collaborative to look at Wickford Elementary School a few years ago their estimate was $8.75 million however the School Facilities Committee researched their recommendations, sought out actual estimates from contractors and suppliers and came in with a $2.65 million estimate to rehab the building, which included a $700,000 contingency.

I am prepared to hear the town council use the inflated estimates from the architects as their reason to spend $700,000 to $1 million on the relocation and moving to the Town Hall into the former school administration building. The council majority has fought providing the cost estimates to the entire council all along so that an intelligent cost comparison could not be made to justify staying in the town hall or relocating and spending taxpayer money that is not in the budget. The majority plans this move to be temporary, 3-5 years, until a plan to build a new government center can be approved by the voters and built. I will not support a new building if they make this TEMPORARY move.

Over two hundred citizens have petitioned the Town Council to stop the relocation of the Town Hall and the annex. I support their petition and hope that common sense will prevail. Spending money to repair our Town Hall is money that should have been spent just to maintain the building and wasn’t. Fixes to the building of the remaining problems may include minor changes that have yet to be considered. Please let your feelings on this subject be known to the Town Council majority.

Richard Welch

Editor’s note: Mr. Welch is a former member of the North Kingstown Town Council.