Municipal Building
Expansion Is
Back on Track
By M. D. Drysdale

Expansion of the Randolph municipal building is back on track—but without the unanimous backing of the selectboard.

The board, which now has just four members, voted 3-1 Tuesday night to back the recommendation of the Building Committee and send out a request for proposals (RFP) for the expansion, as authorized in a 2004 town vote.

Selectman Larry Townsend, however, urged the board to "step back for a minute." He favored taking a new look at options, including other locations, and then going back to the voters for a new authorization.

Chairman Jim Hutchinson and board members Stephen Springer and Ken Goss pushed to go ahead with the original authorization.

"We have to do something," Hutchinson said. "It (the building) doesn’t work. We can’t ignore it (the problem) and have it go away."

In its vote November 2004, the town authorized bonding $1.2 million for the municipal building project. An RFP was sent out at that time to architicts, and the board signed a contract with a consortium of three firms, led by DuBois and King Engineers of Randolph.

However, the contract was for a "design-build" process which had not been specified in the RFP and which no other firm had submitted proposals for.

The building project came to a sudden halt in 2005, however, with the filing of three lawsuits by a neighbors’ group masterminded by contractor Bill Kevan of Stock Farm Road.

The neighbor group was upset that the building plan was different than the conceptual plan that was put forward at the time of the town vote and infringed on the green space between the municipal building and the Post Office.

The first lawsuit challenged the necessity to cut down a large flowering crab on the property. That challenge was upheld, but the town has since corrected the procedural deficiencies.

The second lawsuit targeted the contract itself, because other firms had not been given the opportunity to submit design-build proposals. Judge Mary Teachout agreed with that challenge, as well.

New RFP

The selectboard’s action Tuesday was to send out a new RFP, this time specifying that the town would like to use the design-build process.

Hutchinson said that the only guidelines under that new RFP would be the final price—no more than $1.2 million—and the use of the current site.

He was loudly challenged on this point by Kevan, who attended the meeting. Kevan declared that the town vote authorized only the building expansion as originally envisioned. A new town vote would be necessary to approve any plan, like the D&K consortium plan, that infringed on the green space.

This space Kevan called "the green," but Hutchinson called it "the municipal building lawn."

Kevan threatened that he would file another lawsuit if the eventual plan included building on that space. He accused the board and Hutchinson personally of "malfeasance and misfeasance" in the proceedings so far.

Hutchinson, who also has a voice of considerable volume, answered that "we will follow the court order to the letter" but insisted the town vote did not authorize any particular site plan or building layout.

The Need Explained

Earlier in the meeting, several members of the building committee explained why they felt the renovation/expansion was necessary five years ago and is even more necessary now.

Town Clerk Joyce Mazzucco focused on the inadequate access, showing photographs of a wheelchair-bound woman trying to negotiate the ramp and interior halls, without success.

Ned Herrin, an engineer and former interim president of Vermont Technical College, said he found the reasons for the project to be "well thought out" and he agreed with them.

Townsend Objections

In raising objections to the board’s latest step, Selectman Townsend specified he thought formerly-rejected locations should be considered again. These include the former Branchwood site on Pearl Street and the Jesse Sammis builidng at 2 South Main, where 7000 square feet are available for rent at $12 a square foot—or $84,000 for a year.

Also, Townsend said, maybe the voters have changed their minds about the whole project.

Town Manager Peter Butterfield responded that if the building project doesn’t go forward, he would come back to the board with substantial requests to remedy deficiencies.

"I don’t think it’s something that can be set aside," he warned.