D&K Building Won’t
House Town Offices
By M. D. Drysdale

Randolph’s municipal offices will not be moving to the DuBois & King building on Main Street.

Selectboard Chair Stephen Webster announced Tuesday evening that D&K board chair Bill Baumann had decided to withdraw the proposal he had made in late March. He had suggested that the town purchase the relatively new D&K building and move its offices to the first floor, leaving D&K in the second floor.

The offer was the subject of an executive session of the selectboard and elicited immediate controversy when it was revealed. The "third option" also seemed bound to complicate the previous two-way choice between leaving the town offices where they are or moving them to renovated space on Pleasant Street.

D&K was surprised to find that its offer "was causing some division in town," Webster said, in explaining the new developments at Tuesday’s meeting.

It is also possible that the engineering firm will need more room than it had anticipated, as a long-potsponed contract may finally be approved, which would offer work for more employees.

Webster had notified selectboard members of Baumann’s decision last week Wednesday evening.

Though the development seemingly clarifies Randolph’s choice for town offices, there has been little movement to decide what to do next. The Municipal Building Committee has not held a meeting recently because a key member, Michael Penrod, is out of town.

Webster said Tuesday that the next regularly scheduled selectboard meeting on the topic will be May 26. If Penrod arrives back in town, there could be a meeting of the committee, said Webster, who is the chair of the committee.

Despite the Town Meeting vote to spend Randolph’s bond money to move the offices to Pleasant Street, Webster remains in favor of staying in the current offices. He believes that a brand new design there could be less expensive than the one the Town originally intended to build, but he presently has no outline of a process to create a new design.

The Building Committee had previously asked DuBois & King, which had designed the project, whether it could be done smaller and less expensively, but the company has not responded. Webster Tuesday noted that because of controversy and court actions surrounding that contract, asking D&K to do work on modifications might not be legal.

Other Business

The selectboard also met Tuesday evening with Steven E. Jeffrey, to see whether his League of Cities and Towns could help search for a new Randolph Town Manager.

The current manager, Peter Butterfield, is leaving the job in mid-June.

Later in the discussion former Manager Bert Moffat was mentioned as a possible candidate for interim manager, a position that he has also held in the past. He is apparently interested in helping out.

Jeffery told the board that the likely salary range for a manager is $55-$60,000 but that managers’ salaries of $80,000 are not unusual.

"We’re seeing the graying of this profession," he warned. "All the good ones are getting gray." And, he said, they’re wanting more money.

Two possible candidates, however, showed up at the meeting. One is retiring as the Killington town manager, and another works as a municipal specialist with the League of Cities & Towns.

Exit 4

The next regular selectboard meeting will be in combination with the Planning Commission on May 13 at 6 p.m. It will be held at the conference room at Gifford Medical Center.

The meeting will be an opportunity for the commission to brief the selectboard on its proposal for new zoning surrounding Exit 4, which has been in the planning stages for eight years.

The zoning proposal is now on the selectboard’s desk and can be passed, rejected, or somewhat amended by that board.