Reasons Against
Moving Offices

On Dec. 11 Randolph voters will again get to help decide where Randolph’s municipal building will be. This is extremely important because once that large investment is made, that is likely to be our town office for many years to come.

So far, very little information has been given to voters for them to base their decision on. Here is my perspective.

To this point, the Town has spent almost eight years working on this project. Much time and effort was put into trying to figure out what the needs of the Town are in terms of improved municipal building facilities and into where most of the citizens of the Town would like that enlarged and improved municipal building to be.

After years of investigation and analysis (and several diversions looking at various sites, some more than once) the decision was to remodel and expand at the present location and a 1.2 million dollar bond was easily passed in 2004 to do so. Unfortunately, this was followed by three lawsuits which tried to stop the progress of getting the new building built. Those legal battles have been decided and the Town is now able to move forward.

In the final case, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the Town’s site plan approval to build as requested at the present location. The next step would be to rebid the project in anticipation of starting construction at the present location in the spring of 2008.

The latest diversion is a proposal by a private developer to sell the Town remodeled space at the old Co-op space that he recently purchased. In my opinion, this proposal by Sam Sammis could work (there are still many details that would need to be ironed out) as a location, but the more important question is whether it is better, or even as good, as the approved proposal at the present location?

I think the present location is better for the following reasons:

• At the present location, the Town would have total control over its own building. The old Co-op space is a condo unit. If the Town owned that unit, the Town would have only one vote in four (the other three unit owners would have the other three votes) in deciding what happens with the building itself.

• The costs for the two projects appear to be similar. Sam’s latest letter of intent offers a price of $950,000 to purchase a remodeled Co-op unit. The latest cost estimate for construction at the present site is just under $972,000 (with an accessibility grant from the state reducing this by about $50,000). The contractor who has been advising the Town indicates that now is a great time to rebid the project (due to a slowdown in construction projects). Neither option has a signed contract at this point for a definite price.

• The Town already has a large investment in the option at the present site. The Town just recently spent several hundred thousand dollars to expand and redo the parking lot at the present location in anticipation of upgrading the present municipal building. In addition, the Town has spent approximately $130,000 to get to where we are today in being able to move forward at the present location, of which about $83,000 was for engineering and architectural design for the present location and about $17,000, unfortunately, needed to be spent in legal fees to defend our right to expand at the present location. Do we now want to walk away from this investment by moving to what I believe is a less desirable location?

The present municipal building (and an expanded one) is surrounded by green space. The Co-op unit is surrounded by pavement.

Moving to the Co-op unit would take that off the tax rolls and would eliminate a space that I think might be better used for commercial or retail space, which in turn would help support other businesses in the downtown.

The present location option is much further along in the permitting process. The Co-op location would need to go through both local and state permitting too.

For these and other reasons I would urge Randolph voters to vote "No" on Article 2 on Dec. 11 (a "Yes" vote would reallocate bond funds to the Co-op unit purchase).

This is your opportunity to have a say on this issue. What is in the long term best interests of the town?

Pat French

Randolph