WESTERLO — “Bob, you’d better wear your raincoat,” Supervisor Richard Rapp called out to Judge Robert Carl after a bid to repair the leaking roof above his courtroom was voted down on Oct. 7.

After a long back-and-forth discussion among board members and residents about the merits of replacing the old highway garage, the board voted to ask an engineering firm to estimate the cost of a new building and to ask for the lowest bid offer to be extended for another 30 days.

With one town board member absent, councilmen Alfred Field and Anthony Sherman voted against accepting the lowest bid for a project that was supposed to extend the life of the dilapidated building for another 20 years by giving it a new roof.

The building on Route 401 houses the highway garage, courtroom, and State Police.

William Bichteman, who voted to accept the bid, asked Sherman what should happen next.

“If we’re looking at spending half-a-million dollars, why not go all the way?” Sherman asked. Field also felt that the bids were too high and that the town should investigate building a new structure, referring to a highway garage built recently in Windham.

Including $25,000 for contingency expenses, the lowest bid for the entire highway garage project was $478,000. Rapp said all of the funds for any project would have to be borrowed.

The project included a new roof, siding, block restoration, and new windows and doors. In a meeting with the town’s architectural firm after the bids came in higher than expected, some of the possible reasons for the difference were that the structure is in fact multiple connected buildings, and the cost of roofing has increased by 25 percent in the past year.

Edwin Lawson, the town’s code enforcement officer who has coordinated the preparations for the bidding, estimated a new building would cost more than $1.5 million. Field, who had researched other highway garages recently built in nearby municipalities, believed it could be done for less.

“If we can have a brand new building that we can be proud of for $1.2 million, to extend the bond time, I don’t see a downside, I really don’t,” said Sherman.

“Make a motion,” whispered Leonard Laub, a resident sitting in the gallery who had encouraged the board members in their conversation.

Sherman made the motion, asking Delaware Engineering to examine the replacement of the highway garage, including its current space for the courtroom and the State Police, and to request Mid-State Industries to extend its bid offer for 30 days.

Bichteman noted the bid needed to be awarded quickly in order to secure the prices of building materials, which would have to wait to be used until warmer temperatures in the spring.

Ideas suggested by residents during the meeting included partitioning off a room in the town’s meeting space for the court, fixing the roof alone, or building an addition to the town hall so the cost of replacing the highway building would be reduced.

The town hall used to be housed in the highway building until residents passed a resolution to buy the former Westerlo School for the town offices. About $66,000 in remaining grant money used for that purchase can be put toward maintenance projects at the hall, Rapp said.

Resident Robert Sherman noted from the gallery that the town has other building repairs to expect, with the fixes needed to the roof of the highway superintendent’s office and the entrance to the town hall.

“It just seems like anytime you start construction on it, something’s going to break, or go bad, and it’s still not going to meet our needs, it’s still not going to look very good, either” resident Michael Sikule said of the highway garage.

Bichteman disagreed, noting the repairs would include siding on the outside of the building.

“Although we all suffered sticker shock based on the original engineer’s estimate, with the project price, I think it’s fairly priced,” he said earlier in the meeting.

Lawson, who said he had first been part of discussions to repair the highway garage 10 years ago, told the board he would not be part of the project going forward. He said after the meeting that Windham’s commercial tax base is larger than Westerlo’s, allowing it to borrow more, and again stressed that the cost of a new building would likely be too high for the town.