There has been a great deal of discussion of the uses of the renovated Town Hall, including at the long-promised, oft-delayed “public input session” held by the Board of Selectmen at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday night, Oct. 6. The importance of having Town Hall remain the seat of town government has been a consistent theme, for both paid staff and the myriad volunteer boards and commissions that keep the town going and ensure its bottom-up democratic nature.
Unfortunately, despite all the hard work and diligence, despite all the blather, a major obstacle remains to achieving this goal: the laws of physics. The addition is gone and so are the offices (and most of the storage) from the second floor. Substantially less room remains for vital town government functions. Despite assurances by one selectmen that this is not the case, I am extremely skeptical.
Changing the configuration of the second floor could enable such uses, for now and for many years into the future. But, I bet, such changes would cost money, pushing the total cost of the project above the almost $4 million the town has committed. The way to decide if we should spend that additional money is to look at the incremental benefits versus the incremental costs—what do we get for the money, how much money will it be—and then decide if it’s worth it. Well-informed and well-intentioned people can certainly disagree about whether the additional benefit is worth the additional cost, but we should each make that decision based on a clear understanding of those costs and benefits.
Billy Salter
Elm Street
