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Shaftsbury Will Hold Information Session and Vote on Building Purchase on Feb. 11th

Posted: January 22, 2025

SHAFTSBURY - The town will hold an information session and vote in February on acquiring and upgrading a former doctor's building off Route 7A for town offices. It will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at Shaftsbury Elementary School, 150 Buck Hill Road.

After completion of the information session, those present will vote on the following motion:

"Shall the Town of Shaftsbury expend $375,000 on the purchase of the former Shaftsbury Medical Associates building at 677 Route 7A, Shaftsbury, and an additional $178,486.08 on the renovation and repair needed to make the building appropriate for Municipal Offices?"

The total expenditure of $553,486 will just about use up a fund balance that originated with the federal American Rescue Plan Act money. The vote will be conducted by voice, with a show of hands if necessary. The meeting will be streamed on Zoom.

Town Administrator Paula Iken, contacted by email, said the Community Center Development Committee (CCDC) will be doing the information presentation at the meeting. Select Board enters negotiations to purchase former medical facility for new town hall

"The purchase and renovations will pretty much exhaust the fund balance, but later maintenance and upgrades will be paid for in the usual manner: paid for in budgeted spending and grants," Iken stated. "We don't expect many renovations to be needed, which is one of the good things about a newer building."

The CCDC's recommendations to renovate historic Cole Hall, now site of the town offices, into a community center will be part of the presentation. "Since the building needs extensive renovations and is on Vermont's historical register, we'll need grants and fundraising," she said.

In 2023, Shaftsbury Economic Development Committee Town Green & Community Center Survey 2023 engaged the community in a survey following up on the ARPA Committee's recommendation that money should be used to develop the immediate surroundings of Cole Hall into a Community Center/Town Green.

In total, 128 people replied. The replies indicated a strong desire for community space and places to gather. Since then, the Select Board has acquired land near Cole Hall for a town green and formed the CCDC.

Rather than rushing to commit $558,149 of remaining ARPA money on a new community center by the December 2024 deadline, the town found a work-around by retroactively applying the money to COVID-era town payroll expenses. This created a fund balance of unexpended budget money in the general fund that the town could carry forward beyond the end of 2024. Voters will have their say on expenditure of the funds on Feb. 11.

The original community center concept called for upgrading the town offices at historic Cole Hall and building a new community center on the property acquired nearby. Research by the CCDC found the new construction prohibitively expensive, however. Eventually, town officials became interested in a former medical building in south Shaftsbury.

Dr. David E. King, who owns the building, technically a condominium, reluctantly closed the Shaftsbury Medical Associates office in June 2022 after lengthy efforts to recruit a new physician to take over the practice proved unsuccessful.

The 4,413-square-foot unit, built in 1978, shares a two-acre lot with an attached dental office. It is set back from Route 7A. There's parking for 24 vehicles in three lots. The medical center occupies 70 percent of the entire facility, the dental clinic 30 percent.

Once the town offices are moved to the new site, the plan is to restore Cole Hall into a community center. In presenting its final recommendation to the Select Board, members of the CCDC said that if the town paid the $375,000 asking price for the former medical building and spent $150,000 to renovate it, the square foot cost would be around $120 a square foot. This still would be about half the minimum cost for building new. The town has entered into a contract to purchase the building at the asking price, but voter approval will be needed to complete the deal.

Contacted Wednesday, Select Board Chair Naomi Miller said in an email that, "I believe there are many benefits to the proposal to purchase the Shaftsbury Medical Associates building that should lead people to vote in favor of it. Most importantly, it is without doubt the most fiscally responsible thing for us to do. It will finally put the question of how and where to house our municipal offices to rest, on a solid foundation — with no debt, no heavy lift for taxpayers, and no big worries about the structure of our Town Hall casting a pall over the town's future."

As discussed at the Select Board's Dec. 19 meeting, the Bennington County Regional Commission has helped the town fast-track an environmental assessment of the property and building. Iken wrote that the town doesn't have results of the environmental inspection yet, but they will be available at the Feb. 11 meeting.

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

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