In Harvard, the condition of our public buildings depends largely on the commitment of the tenant to keep them is good condition. The schools have a facilities manager dedicated to looking after Hildreth Elementary School, Bromfield, and the superintendent’s office at Bromfield House. The library is looked after by the Library Trustees and the Bromfield Trustees. The selectmen are left with the rest of them.
Reading the findings of the Municipal Building Committee’s (MBC) assessment of three of the town center’s most important buildings—Town Hall, the old library and Hildreth House, I would conclude that the town has been derelict in its responsibility to provide safe access to these public facilities. This includes both the access within and to the buildings from the streets that surround them. Anybody looking at the condition of our streets and our intermittent sidewalks this winter would easily conclude pedestrians have become second-class citizens.
The Master Plan (2002) and the Town Center Action Plan (2005) make absolutely clear the public’s desire for the preservation of community gathering places and the improvement of pedestrian facilities that connect our town center to the rest of the town. How can certain public officials continue to dismiss these recommendations?
Back when towns were being founded, a meetinghouse was a compulsory requirement. A town could not be established without the commitment of the local population to build a meetinghouse, retain a minister, and provide the resources necessary to support them into perpetuity.
These buildings are more than 100 years old (or close to it) and the cost of deferred maintenance (according to the MBC) has escalated to over $4 million. In addition, costs continue to rise for energy and operations and have placed mounting financial pressures on the town. Couple this with the fact that people are driving less, traveling less, and beginning to focus more inwardly on their families and community. With the contraction of our economy, our public gathering places have become more essential than ever. (Just look at the visitation numbers at the new library—nearly 100,000 visitors last year and close to 250,000 transactions).
I am here to tell you that after working with the community for close to a decade to determine the priorities of the public on the localized issues of access and the restoration of meeting houses, there is widespread agreement that the condition and current accessibility of our older public buildings are appalling.
On behalf of hundreds of participants of public meetings, workshops and forums I would like to summarize their demands: they want their buildings back. They want upstairs of Town Hall back; they want Hildreth to be made fully accessible as a “center for living;” and they want the old library to be their meetinghouse for the next 100 years; and they want the pathways that connect them to be properly constructed and maintained through all seasons.
We have just passed through an era of unprecedented prosperity, yet during these times of good fortune, our predecessors have missed a window of opportunity to begin to take care of these buildings. In fact, their short-sightedness has led to the loss of more than $2 million in Community Preservation funds by failing to establish the fund at 3 percent. Two million dollars would have gone a long way to begin to cover the costs of the repairs of these buildings. Besides that, by doing so we could have protected—but did not—the most financially vulnerable portion of the population by allowing the exemptions to the surcharge that communities who participate at 3 percent are allowed to offer.
The job of the Finance Committee, Capital Planning and Investment Committee, and Board of Selectmen is to make these projects happen in the most cost-effective way possible, as soon as possible. They work for you, the public. The MBC has clearly laid out the task list. I challenge these committees to create a schedule, develop the financing, and figure out how to restore these properties. Let’s get moving. Everybody knows that time is money.
Bolton Road resident Tim Clark is a Harvard selectman.
