Municipal Building Committee Co-Chair Pete Jackson addresses residents at Town Meeting. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Voters Tuesday narrowly approved a plan to borrow nearly $4 million for the renovation of Town Hall and to add the principal and interest due on the loan to Harvard’s excluded debt. The vote, which required a simple majority, was 755-736, evidence of the deep differences of opinion among Harvard residents that have dogged the project all spring.
Three days earlier at Annual Town Meeting, more than two-thirds of the approximately 300 citizens who were present approved an article to complete the detailed design of Town Hall and start construction in the coming 2013 fiscal year at a cost of $3.97 million.
At Town Meeting, the vote to give a green light to the Town Hall project came after roughly an hour of debate, in which there were few verbal fireworks and none of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that characterized a similar argument last year over how to proceed with “conceptual” designs for the Town Hall and Hildreth House. Town Moderator Bob Eubank called for the vote at 11:40 a.m., and after surveying the raised pink cards of the “yeas” and “nays,” he said, “I declare that this article passes by two-thirds.”
The measure asks the town to appropriate the $3.97 million to complete detailed designs and bid documents for construction of the “schematic design” for Town Hall that was developed over the past six months by the five-member building committee and its architect, LLB Architects of Rhode Island. The plan features a new addition that adds roughly 900 square feet to the building, and a restored second floor in the 1872 building that includes a raised stage and lift, and room for four to five simultaneous meetings separated by moveable partitions. The addition will contain the elevator, stairs, and restrooms needed to meet state and federal rules for handicapped access.
The money to pay for the project will be raised by a 20-year municipal bond, with $1 million of the principal and interest paid for with money from the town’s Community Preservation Fund and the rest by an increase in the property tax. Town officials hope that the stage, which will cost an estimated $95,000 to construct, can be partially or entirely funded with private donations.
As it made its way to Town Meeting, the plan for Town Hall had to overcome a series of objections. Why weren’t cheaper designs more fully vetted? Would the new town center sewer have enough capacity to support public events in upper Town Hall? Would the building meet the setback rules of the town’s bylaws? Was there room for the cable committee if it was forced to vacate the old library? What’s the cost of temporarily relocating town employees going to be?
While none of these questions was ever fully answered, none was a show stopper. The task of resolving them will be taken up by the next building committee, which will oversee the final design and construction of the building.
With the blessing of Town Meeting in hand, the vote Tuesday was the last remaining hurdle facing the project. A simple majority of Harvard’s registered voters had to vote to exclude the additional debt payments from the maximum 2.5 percent increase in taxes per year that is allowed by the state.
Finance Committee member Rudy Minar, speaking in favor of the funding, said the impact on the average tax bill would be “less than the cost of having your child participate in a school sport.”
In his presentation to Town Meeting, building committee co-chair Pete Jackson said that if the ballot question succeeded, detailed design could begin immediately. Bid documents could be ready by the fall, and construction could start before Christmas.
“This time [April] next year,” said Jackson, “the project could be 30 percent complete.”
Few rose to speak in opposition to the article on Saturday. Bruce Leicher, of Warren Avenue, said that although he supported the plan, he was disappointed with the process that led to it.
“We’ve had two dueling committees, [the Selectmen and the building committee], that haven’t gotten along,” he said.
“I think you want to have your architect and your building committee in an advisory role, not in a management role,” Leicher said, and he proposed an amendment to specify that design and construction would “be under the direction of the Board of Selectmen.”
Keith Turner, of Littleton County Road, however, objected, saying that the change would remove the “professional experts” of the building committee “from helping to manage the project” and give responsibility for managing it to “the same political body that has caused all kinds of controversy and conflict and slowdown and tangential running away from this project….”
At this point, Turner paused in his oration, and Moderator Eubank jumped in.
“I get your point,” he said. “The amendment is to direct the project. It does not mean the Municipal Building Committee would not be involved.”
Still, even though the Board of Selectmen accepted Leicher’s change as a friendly amendment, Eubank called for a vote “to hear the will of the town,” and an overwhelming majority–on both sides of the question—rejected the motion.
“We’ve gone through a lot of process, some of it fairly well-spirited,” said Billy Salter, of Elm Street, who urged passage of the Town Hall article. “One of the problems with projects like this is that there are inevitably trade-offs. If we fund this, we’ll have less money for other stuff. There are also tradeoffs between what people think is really important.
It’s not that one set of people is right and the other set of people is wrong, it’s that there’s a tradeoff,” Salter said.
Salter was addressing one of the principal concerns of the capital committee and others who continue to harbor deep reservations about the project. Earlier in the debate, capital committee chair George McKenna argued on behalf of his committee that with $15 million of capital projects queued up in its plan for the next five to seven years, together with a rising operating budget and a looming liability for the pensions of town employees and teachers (see related article), the Town Hall project was simply too ambitious.
