Voters at Whitefield’s town meeting Saturday will face 45 warrant articles, including requests for a $750,000 new town office, $99,000 to run the fire department, and a first-ever request for $15,000 in stipends for firefighters and rescue personnel.
Those are the top ticket items in the $1 million budget, a nearly 11 percent increase over the present year. Polls for election of candidates will be open from 8 a.m. to noon in the school gym; the floor meeting begins at 2 p.m.
The town property committee pitched its building proposal last Wednesday when about 30 people with many questions, and deep doubts about the economy, attended an informational meeting.
The 4600 sq. ft. of usable space is needed, stated board of selectmen chairman Steve McCormick. He said there isn’t enough room for keeping records in an orderly way, the present town office violates Americans with Disabilities Act requirements for voting, and citizens attending meetings often have to stand.
Committee chair Erik Ekholm said 10 area towns were visited to glean ideas.
Budget committee member Frank Ober, who also served on the property committee, said, “I tend to disagree that this is not the time to build. There may never be a good time to build. This town has typically held down costs and the budget has been flat in real dollars for several years.”
Property committee member Louis Sell said grants from the Community Block Development Grant (CBDG) program and money from the federal stimulus package probably won’t be available for the project. “We focused on a traditional 30-year loan which reduces annual payments,” he said. The interest rate would be about 5 percent. Half of the annual $48,000 payment would come from surplus, half from taxes. For a 20-year loan at 4.75 percent, the annual payment would be $60,200.
Taxpayers’ cost would be 50-cents per $1000 of property assessment.
Christi Mitchell urged that local contractors be used to boost the local economy if voters approve the project.
Ekholm said, “If we went to a USDA rural development loan, we’d have to pick the lowest bid.”
Architectural designer Lynn Talacko, of Royal Barry Wills Associates, estimated a 10-20 percent overall reduction in building materials, including finished products, if the work is done this year.
Asked why active solar energy use wasn’t incorporated into the project design, Ekholm said, “We were trying to get an attractive, comfortable building (at as low a cost as possible) while making more space available.”
McCormick added, “There’s a lot of stimulus funding available for energy, a lot of programs coming out, for commercial and residential, geothermal and wind. Energy money will be on the table until 2012.”
Ekholm closed the meeting by saying he was gratified by the turnout. “I know we’ll see you at town meeting.”
The only contested race March 21 is for Charlene Bartlett’s vacated seat on the board of selectmen. Candidates for the three-year term are David Hardman Jr. and Sue McKeen.
Planning board incumbent Stephen Smith is running again for a two-year term while no candidates have declared to replace outgoing members Bob Bills and David Roper on the five-person board. The end of school committee member Marianne Marple’s term also leaves a write-in vacancy.
Road commissioner David Boynton is unopposed in seeking another one-year term.
