After months of sporadic discussion on the Municipal Building Committee’s request for funds to renovate Town Hall, the Capital Planning and Investment Committee last Thursday decided not to vote “yes” or “no” on the project but instead to offer a list of pros, cons, and recommendations to the Finance Committee.
Since the beginning of their meetings on the issue, capital committee members have said they were concerned about the limited time available for them to vet the project, and responses on Thursday focused on unresolved issues.
The committee reached its assessment last Thursday evening in a meeting in which each member was asked to score the project against six criteria the group has been using to decide which requests are worthy of funding. A score of 70 is considered a passing grade; the committee gave the Town Hall project a grade of 64.
But seemingly reluctant to fail (or pass) the request of the Municipal Building Committee for $3.9 million to start work next year on the 1872 building, the committee decided to take no formal position.
Committee member Debbie Ricci reiterated that the ratings sheet is not the sole criteria the committee uses to make its recommendations.
Committee members’ ratings
During his 10 minutes for comments, committee member Keith Cheveralls said the 28 to 30 parking spaces for an auditorium that seats 200 to 210 “probably introduces a public safety hazard rather than reducing a public safety hazard.” Cheveralls added that the project “probably met most, but not all, of the town’s needs.”
I need them?”
—George McKenna,
CPIC chairman
As unmet needs, Cheveralls cited the request from Harvard Cable TV for space at Town Hall and the unresolved issue of partitions for the second-floor auditorium. Meanwhile, Cheveralls questioned the need for such a large meeting space since the town already has Volunteers Hall at the library and an auditorium at the Bromfield School.
Cheveralls also said, “Our population has declined from 5,573 to 5,492, a decline of 81 people in a little less than four years.”
What Cheveralls called his “big beef” was the lack of philanthropy to offset the cost to the taxpayers. He pointed to the Municipal Buildings Report from February 2011, which said that 31 percent of the project would be funded through private donations; the current plans include no funding through private donations.
Cheveralls also pointed to a report by the Harvard Historical Commission from May 2011 that said that Town Hall could be repaired for $500,000. His total score for the project was 12.
Ricci scored the project a 10.
“The biggest open question I have on here is what is the alternative to the project,” she said. “Are there other options for restoring Town Hall?”
Ricci said she was concerned there was not enough new meeting space in the plan.
“The renovated Town Hall needs to meet anticipated needs for the next 20 years, at a minimum at least 10 years, and I don’t believe the current plan accomplishes that,” she said.
Ricci said she believed the retention of the performance space was driving the cost of the renovation, and she wanted to see a budget with a cost contingency of 155 percent of the cost of the performance space built in to cover any overruns.
Committee member Cindy Russo also gave the project a score of 10. She said she liked the building plans, but she thought the project was very expensive.
“Without additional revenue coming into the town, can we afford to have such a nice town hall?” she asked.
Russo acknowledged that providing adequate parking would cost more, but thought it was important to get it right. She said if the project was going to move forward the town should try to control costs in three ways: first, by finding private funding sources; second, if the bids came in lower than the estimated amount, not appropriating the differential of the funds; and third by establishing a concrete plan for relocation.
Committee member and Selectman Peter Warren differed from other members of the committee in awarding a score of 19 (later changed to 20 and on Tuesday March 13, revised again to an 18), a difference he attributed to his “stronger opinion about this [project] having to be done.”
Following the guidelines of the ratings sheet, he called the need to do the project “well demonstrated,” adding the town could be taken to court for the building’s code violations. He argued that the payback on the town’s operating budget would come quickly and that the planned renovation did anticipate the town’s future need by having space for future municipal positions such as a land planner and a facilities manager.
Where Warren most sharply differed from fellow committee members was his evaluation of the cost of deferring the project; while others saw “some detrimental effects” to delaying the project, Warren argued that now was the best possible time to move forward with the project while construction costs and interest rates are both low.
He called this “the best time possible.” He cited the example of a second floor to a fire station that the town had considered building in 1972 that was considered too expensive at $50,000. Now the fire station is scheduled to be renovated in fiscal 2015 for $500,000. He agreed with other capital committee members that parking was an issue but suggested that parking could be moved to the other side of the Hildreth House and serve both buildings.
Committee Chair George McKenna rated the project a 12 overall. Within the category of “justification of need,” he awarded a total of two, and gave zeros for “affordable,” “minimal risk of cost overruns,” and cost to value ratio.
From McKenna the project received the maximum points possible for “is the requested amount reasonable and has the project cost been substantiated” and “the project’s expected useful life” being more than 20 years.
McKenna awarded two out of a possible five points in the category of whether the project could be deferred without detrimental effects.
For his pros, McKenna listed the need for extensive repairs for Town Hall and favorable rates; as cons he listed a number of unresolved questions including the location of the cable committee and the plan for relocating town offices. He cited a Finance Committee survey of 2008, which indicated that fewer people are visiting Town Hall for transactions.
McKenna criticized the “lack of vision for programming needs and designs in the electronic age.” McKenna also spoke strongly about what he called “the failure to seriously consider the excess municipal building space in town to limit or perhaps eliminate this addition.”
Eight years ago, when considering the construction of the new library he was told that the town had a plan for use of the old library, McKenna said.
“I was told to be patient,” he said. “Let’s move forward with this new project, get the state grant funding because we don’t want to lose that. We have a wealth of private funding that people have committed to and we don’t want to lose that.”
Eight years later the use of the old library is still unresolved. His vision for the old library is as a Town Hall annex with additional meeting space. Therefore, he argued, “There’s no need to build the addition to this building to the size we’re building it or perhaps the addition at all.”
Like Ricci, McKenna identified the performance area as the driving force behind the Town Hall renovation and that, he said, was “a want, not a need.”
“There’s a lot of things I want, but do I need them?” McKenna said. “I want to address the things I need.”
During the general discussion Cheveralls suggested the Pilot Project at the old library might join the Hildreth House after the expansion to form a large cultural center.
Next steps
The capital committee planned to review and approve a draft of its recommendations at its next meeting. From there, the document will go to the Finance Committee, which is awaiting the capital committee recommendation, and then on to the Selectmen. The Finance Committee must decide whether to recommend the borrowing of the $3.9 million the project needs, an opinion that is often decisive.
It is up to the Selectmen to craft and approve a warrant article to authorize the spending for the project through borrowed funds, a decision expected at their next meeting. The final deadline for all three committees is March 28, when the warrant must be closed.
Editor’s note: John Osborn contributed to this story.
