The Board of Selectmen met again in a workshop tonite with the finance and capital planning comittees (as well as a number of others) to discuss what we should do about the town hall situation.

This time, it seems like things are getting somewhere.

A review of the court consent decree had been done by town counsel Jim Hall. In this review, he had listed the minimum amount that needed to be done to meet the requrements of the decree.

Instead of coming from the problem from the point of view of the architect (who designed a beautiful building, and then worked hard to convince us that we could do no less), they came at the situation from the point of view of patching the situation as much as we can, and them coming back over time and working out a long term solution.

Now, of course there were some who were concerned. Some were concerned about space, others were obviously concerned that this “bandaid” approach would lead to the problem not getting solved… we’ll get back to that.

Update: Lowell Sun Reports

To resolve the decree, it would be best to move Selectmen secretary Barb Sousa and Asst Town Manager Glenn Edwards from the second floor down to the main floor of the building.. which would crowd the situation even more (but eliminate the need for an elevator). Another exit needs to be designed for safety.

But the second floor could be converted to non-public use (storage, and maybe meetings).

The question of adding a portable (like the schools use) came up, but there is no real space available around the town hall to fit one. Perhaps we could buy the property behind the town hall, as was proposed for the earlier project, but we’re not sure yet.

Can we build in phases? or multiple projects? we’ll probably have to. But until then, we still need to deal with the initial issues defined in the court decree (which did say to do what was “feasable”).

Prior to this meeting, the town Building Inspector, Dan McLaughlin, had put together a proposal that would see most of the required items getting done with nearly $100,000.00.

Selectman Bob Cox really took the lead during this meeting. He has been going through the Town Hall (working with the building inspector) measuring and planning, and looking for solutions (he plans on returning later this week to dismantle some doorways to see if they can be restructured to make them wider.

He lead the group in a drive towards a temporary solution to the consent decree, knowing that later the real solution will be finding a way to build a new town hall facility.

But as the meeting was coming to a conclusion, Chairman John Zimini had noticed that Selectman Jim O’Loughlin had stayed quiet throughout the meeting and Zimini said “I don’t want us to leave here thinking there is unanimity here when I know that there isn’t… which is ok.” Ane he asked for input from the others.

At this point, O’Loughlin spoke up:

Its not unanimous. Its not that I disagree with any of the efforts to do something I have to disagree when I keep hearing the words “temporary” and “this is a bandaid” because I don’t think for a minute that this is temporary or a bandaid.

I think whatever we do over there is going to be the final solution because you’re not going to go back to the people in two years or three years and say “ok now we’re going to to the town, we just put $250,000.00 or $300,000.00 into this and its handicap accessible and everyone can get in there and there’s no court decree, the counters are lowered and the doors are wide and we’ve done everything we can… but we want to build a new town hall.”

I don’t see that happening. I think with the $250,000.00 we throw in there we better get used to living in there for 15, 20 years, because that’s going to be the end of it.

Its just one man’s opinion, but I think the voters of the town have shown me over the last 15 years that they’re progressive and they’re ready to make the right decision when they have the right facts presented to them.

And I think, what I’m hearing tonite, is maybe they didn’t.

I don’t know why they didn’t, but they didn’t.

We all sat through a lot of meetings. I heard Mr DiRocco on a couple occasions ask for the numbers that we’re finally getting tonite. And every time he asked for those numbers he was told “oh, it’s a couple million dollars.. to do what we’re asking tonite would be a couple million dollars.”

Well, magically, its not.

Magically, all Mr Cox had to do was talk to the building inspector and all of the sudden we can live within the consent decree for a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Mary Howe interjected “But that’s just one building..”

J.O: No, its not, its two.

It’s the annex and the town hall, both proposals are here in front of me.

Now, why those numbers didn’t come, I don’t know. I don’t want to revisit that, I don’t want to point fingers at anybody. All I know is I sat here and I heard the question asked time and time and time again..

And every time that question was asked, and I’ll yield to Mr DiRocco’s knowledge of the construction business. He asked the question, I waited for the answer, I heard a million and a half. I heard two million.

Well, I think the people were a little bit smarter than I was.

Because I think the people sat and said “wait a minute, I don’t believe this.

“I don’t believe for a minute that we can’t go in there and put a band-aid on this thing for well under a million dollars. I don’t see why we can’t do it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

I think the people felt that maybe they were mislead.

And you know what? I think they were. Quite honestly, I think they were. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but they had to have been.

I know I felt I was. I sat here like a dope, going out and telling the people “Sorry, this is the best we can do.”

And now here we are in August and I’m being told that for a couple of hundred thousand I can live within the court decree.

That’s bull.

That is bull that we have to be talking like this.

We should have been talking about this before the election was ever held.

We should have been able to tell the people, “Look, here’s the deal folks. We can get in there for $250,000.00. Do you want to go in there for $250,000.00 for a building that probably should be torn down .. to a building that definitely should be torn down.. or do we want to do this.”

I don’t think they believed what we were saying.

And you know what, now I know why they didn’t believe it.. because it wasn’t true.

But I still don’t agree that putting a couple hundred thousand is the best idea, because I still think that we’re going to be stuck with that building for the next 15 or 20 years.

I think we’ve soured the people.

The only way to come back now is to lay everything on the table and let the voters have a bite at this.

Whether you do it through a non-binding referendum which we talked about, I don’t know how you do it. That’s one idea.

I still don’t think we’ve done what Mr Malliaros talked about all through the campaign. And that’s going to court and saying we want more time. He talked about it.. I heard it over and over and over in every debate we had. It made sense to me, so I incorporated it into my answers during debates.

Why aren’t we? We still haven’t don’t it.

To my knowledge, we still haven’t gone back and said .. I mean Dan’s given us some great information tonite about how to come in under the wire of the court decree. What’s wrong with going back to the court and saying “you know what, here’s what we did. We had an override, it failed. We’re looking for other options, we need some time. We can’t make good decisions with this time bomb ticking over our heads.”

We still haven’t don’t it. I don’t know why we haven’t don’t it. I mean it seemed like a viable solution at the time.

So anyways, I’ve been quiet most of the night, but no I’m not going to be in favor of throwing two hundred.. and I think Dan’s right in that by the time its done its going to be three or four hundred.. and now we’re talking about buying a modular. Its going to be a half a million by the time we’re done (because you open the walls and your going to find this and find that.)

Its going to be a half a million dollars being thrown into two buildings that should be torn down.

And people should be working in conditions that are workable, not in those kind of firetraps that they’re working in.

That’s it.. I’m sorry

The committee decided to move ahead with requesting more time from the court, and continuing to put together a design plan to meet the short term need of fulfilling the court decreee.

The plan is to then work over the long term to replace the facility.

I do agree with O’loughlin though. The risk is very great that we will never get back to this project. It could become our own third rail, with every election going by with it becoming a debate issue, but then never seeing anything get done to resolve it.