Home Town News & Announcements

Shaftsbury Select Board sets Guidelines for Community Center Development Committee

Posted: July 17, 2024

SHAFTSBURY - The Select Board at its meeting Monday defined tasks and set deadlines for the Community Center Development Committee (CCDC).

The CCDC is looking at continuing improvements at Cole Hall, site of the town offices, and development of a town green and community center on adjacent land the town has acquired. Affordable housing may also be part of the project. Concurrently, another town committee is conducting a feasibility study for a sewer or septic project in the same general area.

"I'm thinking that the first thing that the CCDC should do is to brainstorm and really come up with concrete functions for each piece of this campus that we're talking about right now, the functions of what Cole Hall is going to be, the functions of what the town green and community center can be, and what potentially might be down the road - housing," said Select Board Vice Chair Martha Cornwell. She is also chair of the CCDC.

"From there, once you have a sense what is happening for each of those spaces that are all kind of working together in concert, is to then come up with phased plans," Cornwell said. "So, I envision maybe the phase one plan, talking about Cole Hall, the immediate building; phase two being the community center, town green; and then phase three being the housing project, potentially for work-first community housing."

She would like the CCDC to have concrete recommendations for the Select Board by January. Cornwell will be focusing on finding matching grants for each of the projects. Select Board Chair Naomi Miller will be joining the CDCC as a contributing member. Cornwell asked that the CCDC have completed a visual representation of the projects on the campus by March.

About $558,000 of local funding for these projects depends on a resident vote at Town Meeting in March 2025. The Select Board will ask-voters to approve use of this fund balance to create a new reserve fund for the community projects. If the vote it positive, the funds will then be included in the fiscal 2026 spending plan.

This money was originally from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Because of a change in federal rules, the town faced a deadline to spend these funds on shovel-ready projects by the end of this year. However, to get around this, and have more time to plan and apply for matching grants, the Select Board instead applied $558,149 retroactively to payroll, creating a fund balance of that amount in the general fund.

This use was an approved one, designated for the purpose of municipal workforce retention to reimburse the town for payroll expenses for the period of Sept. 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024, supporting its response to and recovery from the COVID 19 public health emergency.

Shaftsbury originally received an allocation of $1,025,627 through 2021's American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and had $658,149 left, before setting aside $100,000 for demolition of buildings at 43 Buck Hill Road, which the town has acquired as part of the community center project.

The town will have extra ARPA funds still available from this last set-aside, as the lowest of five bids for demolition of the buildings on the property came in at $28,925 when opened during Monday's meeting.

Considerations raised during discussion of the CCDC's work included ongoing concerns with Cole Hall, which has undergone ongoing renovation work over the years. A current need is to remove mold, which will necessitate moving downstairs employees up to the second floor. Due to lack of air conditioning and other factors this is not likely to take place until the fall.

"Are we going to suck up all this money for Cole Hall?" asked Board member Tony Krulikowski.

"The CCDC really needs to think creatively about balancing the possibilities of whether some of the functions that Cole Hall now serves could actually be served by a new building, and thus reduce the kind of expensive changes that we need to do to this historic building," Miller said. "And what are the functions that we really want to keep in this building and then how can we meet them?"

Krulikowski also suggested that something concrete needed to get done before long. "I’m just thinking that we need to start something in order to generate interest and revenue," he said.

Miller said she spoke with someone from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns who said getting local social services providers to sign onto such projects is important.

"And there are plenty of them who want to come here and use a building," she said. "And they will put that in a letter of intent. So I think we’ll have some things like that."

Compliments of: The Bennington Banner
Posted/Author: Mark Rondeau

---