WESTERLO — The three town board members present at Tuesday’s meeting decided to move forward with plans for renovating the town hall, a former school the town purchased in 2010.

The board accepted the recommendations of the building committee, which is composed of all the board members, including the town supervisor.

The action authorizes the expenditure of  $60,000. The sum will cover engineering fees for completing and modifying as needed the draft renovation plan, and for preparing estimates based on a final version.  

The board also authorized going to the voters in November, when a referendum on the general election ballot will ask them to approve a bond issue to finance the project. The amount of the bond issue will be determined by the estimated cost of realizing the detailed and final design.

In the absence of  Supervisor Richard Rapp, councilman William Bichteman presided at Tuesday’s meeting. He fielded questions and concerns, many of them from town hall employees who work in the building and — in the form of a letter to the board — from the town zoning administrator and deputy supervisor, Edwin Lawson.

Though not on the committee, Lawson attended some of its meetings.

Since it was purchased, the building has undergone little or no improvement nor any remodeling to convert it from a school configuration into office and meeting space.

In 2015, the town planned to renovate Town Hall and build a new highway garage by  issuing bonds up to $2.5 million. Residents petitioned for a permissive referendum, which  was resoundingly defeated. Some voters balked at the cost. Others were perturbed by the lack of transparency in the way town officials developed the project.

No mention was made by board members Tuesday of the town garage that still needs repair and renewal. But one onlooker asked if residents will be asked to pay for that in the future, too. Bichteman said, “We want to take a definite number to voters in November”  for the town hall project. He said he expects that number “to be way less than $850,000.”

Bichteman said, “We’re not looking to build a Taj Mahal.”

He promised that, if estimated costs begin to get into the “exorbitant” range, “we can reduce it.” He said the building committee will be holding a series of meetings with the engineering firm in the weeks ahead, to bird-dog costs as the final plan is developed.

Councilman Amie Burnside, who voted for moving the project forward, said she nonetheless remains concerned about costs.

But, referring to a final design and estimate, she said, “We have to go to the next step to arrive at an actual number” to present to the voters.

Town attorney Aline Galgay observed that putting the referendum on the November ballot, rather than going to the expense of organizing a separate referendum, is a “cost-effective” measure.

Bichteman pointed out that the November presidential election should produce a “big turnout...we want everyone to have their say.”

Town hall employees at the meeting had their say. And they were not happy.

Claire Marshall, clerk to the town assessor for 17 years, read a letter from Lawson laying out his criticisms of the draft floor plan. And then she expressed her own.

The plan’s provisions for two meeting rooms; for a new exterior stairway to the basement storage areas (replacing the present interior stairs to free up space); and for relocation of the clerk’s office were among the targets of Lawson’s epistolary critique.

“I have never known us to have two meetings going on at one time,” Marshall said.

Lawson’s says in his letter that building the exterior stairway, including asbestos removal, would cost about $125,000.

“I don’t know how he gets that number,” Bichtemen said.

Bichteman told Marshall and other town workers who complained about changes in their work spaces,  “The way the government works in the building is our main concern.”

“We want to get this on the ballot in November and we don’t have time to go back and forth endlessly,” he asserted.

“We can function the way we are,” said one employee. “How can you justify all this expense?”

Marshall asked why the committee had never met with the town hall workers “who are here a majority of the time.”

“We tried to explain our need for more storage room and you have not met our needs,” she said.

She was apparently referring to a memo she said sent to the committee May 3.

But as least one board member, Burnside, seemed unaware of the input. She huddled with town employees after the meeting.

In addition to reallocation of interior spaces, the draft floor- and site-plans also call for restoring the front entrance for use; extending the driveway all around the building (it dead-ends presently behind the building), and creating new parking spaces in the front for people with handicaps,  along with a new access ramp.

In the open forum that concludes Westerlo town board meetings, the topic of lost dogs and their recovery dominated the discussion. Several speakers said they would like to see more done to coordinate information about lost dogs, shelter lost dogs, and return them to their owners,

When the town attorney, Galway, tried to contribute to the discussion, she was told by one irate resident that she was not being addressed. And Galgay left the meeting.

One board seat, left vacant by the resignation of Theodore Lounsbury III on April 4, remains unfilled.

Corrected on July 12, 2016, to reflect the fact that the abandonment of Clickman Road had not been decided at the June 23 meeting. The final decision was made at the July meeting.