NEW SHARON — Voters will gather at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Cape Cod Hill School to decide whether to spend $1.8 million for a new town office and fire station.
After months of work, selectmen and the building committee have agreed to propose the least expensive option to address the fire station and town office needs, Board of Selectmen Chairwoman Lorna Nichols said.
The proposed option calls for demolishing the current Town Office and building on the site, which the town owns, she said.
The issue is being addressed next week instead of at the annual meeting in March so that contractor bids can go out in early 2018 if voters accept the proposal, she said.
If the town waits until March, it would be late spring before bids could go out, and many contractors already would have lined up work for the year. The costs also probably would be higher, she said.
If voters accept the proposal, selectmen and the committee would like to see construction take place next summer and end before winter.
Last fall the town’s insurance company said it would stop coverage of the fire station because of structural problems, mainly the roof. The company has continued its coverage because a building committee, appointed by selectmen, was working on the issue.
But that is not the only problem, Nichols said. Firetrucks have to be modified, at extra cost, to fit into the station, she said.
Also, the municipal building has a leaky roof and black mold in places, and asbestos was installed throughout the building, she said. The annual cost of heating the building is high.
After looking at several options, both selectmen and the committee agreed that the cost of renovating the municipal building was so close to the cost of a new building that it would be better to start over, Nichols said.
It is a good time for the town to tackle the project because it has no debt, she said.
To finance the project, voters will consider taking a 12-month loan for the construction phase through Camden National Bank at an interest rate of 2.54 percent. They then will be asked to take a 30-year loan at 3.5 percent interest through Rural Development, which would pay off the bank loan, she said. Monthly payments would be $8,082 for 360 months to pay the total debt of $2.97 million, she said.
Voters also will consider selling the fire station property and using that and the balance of the Fire Station Reserve account, about $300,000, on project costs to help reduce the debt burden, according to the warrant.
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