Tucked in along Main Street in Contoocook, the Bates building has housed Hopkinton’s town clerk’s office for the last 20 years.
It was originally the town’s library, built in 1959 on donated land using donated money from the family whose name continues to hang over the front door.
In October, the town’s select board voted to temporarily move the clerk’s office about three miles up the road to town hall. At the time, board members said the office would return to the Bates building in March of this year.
That plan has changed significantly in the last three of months.
The select board voted in a recent meeting to keep the clerk’s office at town hall permanently, and is now exploring options to sell the building altogether.
Members of the board see an opportunity for the town to save money each year by consolidating business operations into one building. They say the money that would come from a sale would be earmarked for other projects, such as upgrades to the town hall and the ongoing library renovation after it sustained severe damage in a fire in August.
Not everyone is on board with the direction their elected leaders are heading with the facility.
Christine Hoyt, a lifelong resident of Contoocook for more than 70 years who sometimes pitches in to help at the clerk’s office, is collecting signatures for a petition calling on the select board to send the offices back to the Bates building. She attended the board’s Dec. 26 meeting and expressed concern about the town hall becoming too busy with the clerk’s office there.
She has other thoughts on how the move to town hall negatively affects residents and office workers, but the crux of her argument isn’t so much what the select board is doing but how it made its decision.
“In all of this, I feel the voters of town should have the last word,” Hoyt said. “I don’t think the select board should make this decision on their own.”
Hoyt created the petition with the goal of it reaching a town-wide vote at town meeting in March. Town Administrator Neal Cass said the petition requires the signatures of 25 residents to make it on the warrant. Hoyt said she has between 40 and 50 signatures so far.
If Hoyt’s petition makes it to town meeting, it will serve as a measurement of how voters feel about the Bates building and the town clerk’s location in town. By law, it is under the select board’s authority to manage facilities and how they are used, Cass said. Whichever way voters decide, it will go down as an advisory to the board in its decision making.
While residents can only express a recommendation to the board on that measure, they will likely have the opportunity to decide the future of the Bates building with another. The select board plans to have an article on the warrant in March on whether to sell the building.
Select board chair Jim O’Brien said the idea of selling the Bates building came up while the board was preparing its budget to present in March. O’Brien said the town could save about $30,000 per year by keeping the clerk’s office in town hall, and the money made from selling it could be used for fixing up the town hall and library.
To sell the building, the board first has to negotiate with the charitable division of the Attorney General’s Office to iron out how the proceeds would be distributed. The deal would then need court approval; at the same time, it can go to town meeting in March so voters can decide whether to give the board permission to sell.
The public’s next chance to weigh in on the future of the Bates building is at the select board’s Feb. 4 meeting at 6 p.m. in town hall.
Selectman Ken Traum, who was once against selling the building, has changed his stance and will be one of the negotiators going to the attorney general’s office along with selectwoman Sabrina Dunlap.
“It’s one-stop shopping for town residents that come in wanting to do something with the clerk, planning, the business office,” he said. “I think it makes sense.”
The Bates building continues to house the office for the supervisors of the checklist. It also held the offices for the cemetery trustees until they moved to town hall last year.
The board’s decision to move the clerk’s office to town hall was made based on the advice of their lawyers and for reasons that still have not been disclosed publicly.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)