Old Town Hall saved from wrecking ball

Annual Town Meeting continued after five hours

By Owen Boss

WESTMINSTER — Citizens of Westminster gathered in the gym at the Westminster Elementary School for their Annual Town Meeting Saturday, and voted on motions that would decide how the town will spend a budgeted $16 million in the coming year, which included voting down a hotly contested motion to demolish the 169-year-old Town Hall. The town’s Board of Selectman were unanimously in agreement to tear down the hall because they felt that it would end up costing the taxpayers more money to get the hall to a point where it was structurally safe for community use than it would to simply tear it down. Selectman Thomas P. O’Toole said that the main problem with the building wasn’t that there was a shortage of ideas for its use from the community, but simply that it was structurally unsafe. According to Mr. O’Toole, in order to get the building to a point where it could be once again used by the community included renovations that would have installed elevators and ramps that would make the building handicap-accessible. “This is one of those situations where a lot of people have a lot of great ideas for what we can do with the building; the problem is making it safe and legal for the public to use it,” said Mr. O’Toole. “Our first estimate for the building was $1.3 million, and that was just to get the building to the point where we could start renovating it.” Although there were several independent parties interested in purchasing the building, Mr. O’Toole worried that they would simply buy the building, and put off renovations until they could afford it. “The selling of the building is not the issue, it’s making sure that the building is brought up to code by whomever purchases it,” said Mr. O’Toole. “What we don’t want (is) someone buying the building and then just having it sit there falling apart more and more each year.” Also in favor of the Town Hall’s demolition was Selectman John F. Fairbanks, who said that although he understood that the building had sentimental value to many members of the community, in his opinion the town could not afford the project. “In my opinion we just don’t have enough money to fix every old building in town,” said Mr. Fairbanks. “We just cant afford it.” James Delisle was the only member of the town’s Advisory Board that was against the decision to destroy the Town Hall because he thought selling it was the best option for the town. “When I see the demolition of Town Hall I see dollar signs,” said Mr. Delisle. “Spending taxpayers money towards the destruction of a town building when we already have interested outside parties just doesn’t make sense to me. I think if we have someone interested in buying the building for $25,000 that would be the best decision.” Resident Betsy Hannula, who seemed to be the most adamantly opposed member of the community at the meeting, presented a PowerPoint presentation that emphasized the importance of the town halls as a historical landmark, and educated citizens in attendance of how many historical buildings the town had lost in the last 30 years, which included the former town museum. “Just to give you an idea, in 1969 when we celebrated our last major town anniversary, we had 34 homes in Westminster that were created before the Revolutionary War, and only 27 of them remain today,” said Ms. Hannula. “Our board of selectman talk to us about how they can’t save every old building in town; well when we count every old municipal building, there’s only two.” Following the vote to save the building, the citizens in attendance cheered and applauded for the first and only time during the five-hour town meeting. Following the motion, the meeting ran past the scheduled ending time of 6 p.m., and a motion was passed to continue the meeting in the same location at a later date. oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 5/5/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 107)