The Center on the Common will remain in existence as a legal entity, two representatives of its board of directors told the selectmen Tuesday night, but no clear plans for the center’s future emerged from the discussion. Meanwhile, a second nascent cultural organization said that, if invited, it was prepared to offer a plan of its own.
President Bob Hubert and board member Lillian Burkart brought the Board of Selectmen a summary of financial records going back to the Pilot Project, which preceded the Center on the Common as a nonprofit arts organization located in the old library. But the reaction of several selectmen made clear that these records were not the forward-looking, three-year financial plan for the future they had expected to receive.
Not responsible tenants
“I was hoping for a greater explanation of how you were going to handle the next three years, with projections of income and expenses and so on,” Selectwoman Lucy Wallace said. Referring to the insurance policies that were allowed to lapse last spring, Wallace said that event did not reflect well on the board as responsible tenants.
Selectman Leo Blair was blunter. “This thing went off the rails a long time ago,” he said, citing the center’s failure to renew its lease, pay the town for rent or utilities, or keep its insurance policies in force. “Nothing you could present would convince me that the future would be any different.”
Hubert told the selectmen the CoC would need financial assistance from the town to reopen. “In order to continue the Center on the Common at 7 Fairbank Street, the town will have to continue to subsidize some of the costs of the old library, beyond those of a normal landlord,” he wrote in a letter dated Jan. 14.
Both Hubert and Burkhart acknowledged that the failure to renew insurance policies for the CoC had been an error on their part. But they said that uncertainty over the future use of the old library was at the root of many of the center’s financial problems. They said they were unable to raise funds after qualifying as a tax-deductible nonprofit organization last fall because potential donors knew that the old library building might be temporarily taken over for town offices.
Using the old library for town offices during the Town Hall renovation would indeed be “the highest and best use” of that building for the next year, Blair said near the end of the discussion.
New committee steps up
As the discussion drew to a close, Chairman Stu Sklar produced a letter dated Jan. 12 from a newly created group calling itself “the Planning Committee.” Should the Center on the Common decide not to continue its activities, the letter read, the committee “would appreciate the opportunity to present their vision of a Harvard Cultural Collaborative, using the old library as its hub.” Sklar encouraged the two groups to meet and work out a single plan that could be presented to the town.
After the meeting, Planning Committee member Jim Breslauer told the Press that his group did not want to interfere with the efforts of the Center on the Common. “We’re here as backup,” he said.
