Randolph Will Vote
WhetherTo Move
Town Offices
By M. D. Drysdale

Randolph voters will have a chance to decide where their municipal offices will be next Tuesday, when a special Town Meeting is held by Australian ballot. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Murray Auditorium at Randolph Union High School.

A public hearing and informational meeting will be held Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the high school media center.

There will be two questions for voters. The first will be a request to add $35,000 to the amount that was approved in March at Town Meeting for the White River Valley Ambulance.

At Town Meeting, Randolph approved $35,000 less than had been requested by the ambulance service, because of selectboard concerns about WRVA’s administrative and financial operations.

Now, new leadership has taken over at WRVA and the selectboard, citing its confidence in the new leadership, has agreed to support the request to add the $35,000 for ambulance services.

Tom Anderson, new president of the board, said this week that the extra money is "critical" to continuing services. Because of its population, Randolph uses the ambulance far more than any other town.

Town Offices

The second question before voters is whether the $1.2-million bond issue approved three years ago to enlarge and renovate the municipal building may now be used to move the offices to a new location—the former Randolph Cooperative Market at 24 Pleasant Street, in the former Merrimaid’s building.

The Municipal Building Committee, which for eight years has been trying to provide better conditions for town employees, has officially endorsed a proposal to move the town offices to the co-op space.

The committee is chaired by Selectboard Chair Jim Hutchinson, who reported the committee’s decision Monday night at the selectboard meeting.

The committee was not unanimous in its decision. Hutchinson said the vote was 4-2. The four in favor of the move were Hutchinson, zoning administrator Mardee Sanchez, Ned Herrin, and Michael Penrod. Opposed to the move were town assessor Patrick French and town clerk Joyce Mazzucco.

The Building Committee was responding to a proposal by Jesse "Sam" Sammis, who bought the co-op space this fall in a foreclosure auction for $300,000. Sammis has offered to sell the space to the town for the same amount. In a letter of intent, he has also proposed to renovate the 7700-square-foot space into town offices at a cost of $650,000.

Improvements would include new windows and new paint for the entire building, plus new wiring and heating, and a new vault for land records, in addition to setting up the inside of the building as a suite of offices as determined by an architect. Construction could be complete by next Sept. 1, Sammis wrote.

The former co-op space is part of a condominium arrangement that also includes owners of the top floor, the basement, and the Three Bean Café. After early discussions with the Building Committee, Sammis said he received agreement to amend the condominium agreement to restrict liability and restrict the uses in the upper floor.

(It is also reported that Irene Rich, owner of Tony’s Gym on the top floor, is looking to sell her business and has approached the town to buy the top floor, too. However, the town has expressed no interest in that.)

Concerns

Worries about the town offices being part of a condominium are still high on the list of the concerns of French and Mazzucco, though, and both of them addressed the selectboard Monday.

The town would lack total control of its property, Mazzucco said, and would be faced with uncertain condominium fees.

She also noted that the move would take the property off the town tax rolls.

French agreed with her points and added that a disadvantage would be the lack of green space around the building. In addition, he noted, townspeople in previous surveys have said they like the offices where they are—although the Pleasant Street location had never been previously proposed as an alternative.

He also cited the fact that much of the engineering had already been done for the project as originally planned, at a cost of $82,000, and that the town has spent $17,000 on legal fees fighting lawsuits targeting the project—specifically the question of cutting down the large old crabapple tree.

Hutchinson said that he had two major reasons for preferring the Pleasant Street location. First, he said, there would be no more expansion possibilities in the current location; and second, he believes it will be less expensive. In addition, he noted, legal threats still hang over the expansion as currently planned, and he believes that the Pleasant Street alternative can be completed more quickly, and without requiring employees to work around construction for a year.

"The time has come to do something," he stressed. "Now, in order to make a photocopy, we have to turn off the air conditioning."

Which Will Cost More?

Whether the new proposal will in fact cost less than new construction and renovation at the current location is in dispute.

Hutchinson said he believes it will be less expensive, because Sammis’ price is a "no-more-than" deal.

French, however, said at the selectboard meeting he believes the cost of the two proposals will be virtually the same.

Long-time Building Committee member Michael Penrod said this week he thinks the new proposal will save the town about $120,000—perhaps a quarter million dollars if the town decides to sell the current municipal building.

Committee member Herrin also said he believes that the Pleasant Street proposal is "on balance, financially the better deal." He fears, he said, that the improvements originally planned for the existing building may prove to be more expensive now—"greater than we have money for."

Sanchez said that, for her, the biggest advantage was for the staff not to have to work there during the construction.

All of them also agreed that having all the offices and the meeting room on one floor would be a decided advantage.

"It’s an opportunity to take a relatively ugly building and end up with a facility that Randolph will be proud of," Penrod said. "And I personally like the ease of having somebody else build it and the town just moves in."

The selectboard as a whole declined to recommend either one choice or the other to the voters. They encouraged citizens to come to the informational meeting on Monday.