Constructive deliberation, Sam Lake renovation take front seat at Canterbury town meeting

Kathleen McKay is able-bodied and young.

As Canterbury’s administrative assistant, McKay regularly navigates the steep flight of stairs into the basement of the historic Sam Lake House, where many of the town’s hard-copy records are kept as the house’s one-car garage, which hosts some town offices, grows increasingly cramped.

The town cannot legally rid itself of the physical copies of some files, but the basement is perpetually dank, despite three sump pump’s best efforts to prevent overflowing pond water from wrecking permanent damage. The space also is not ADA compliant, and McKay worries that, for a select board that skews older, hauling around 40-pound boxes of documents is a worker’s compensation claim waiting to happen.

For McKay, suggestions at Canterbury’s town meeting on Friday that the town could skirt a proposed garage renovation by moving town offices into the basement were nonstarters.

“The building needs to get fixed anyway, and I do believe it will be long-term the right space,” McKay commented. “Statewide and federally, things are moving towards accepting electronic copies, so, in 10 years, we might be allowed to digitize some of those.”

The article, one of the most contentious on the town warrant despite carrying no tax impact, would set aside $80,000 from the Sam Lake House Capital Reserve Fund for the remodel. Residents questioned if the town had looked into storing files off-site.

Selectwoman Beth Blair explained the situation plainly. “The room that seemed generous when the building was designed is getting crowded,” she said. “The estimates we’ve gotten seem to be within the money that we have, and the need is there.”

The garage was left out of a 2017 remodel to the rest of the property, which was deeded to the town by resident Sam Lake in 1940. The garage received fresh concrete flooring in 2018, and since then, it has become an administrative space for the town’s land use administrator, building inspector, planning board, secretary, treasurer and the supervisors of the checklist. The house includes more office space for the town’s part-time government and storage. 

The article passed after lengthy deliberation. Canterbury voters green-lit articles to purchase voting equipment and a new ballot-counting device, to pay the last installment of the Gold Star bond and to hold a Hazardous Waste Day at the transfer station.

They authorized a study to determine whether the transfer station can be renovated or expanded at its current location but defeated an article to replace a packer truck at the station.

Residents also voted to weatherize the Elkins Public Library, part of which “acts like a chimney sucking the heat right out of the building,” according to Tom Franco, a member of the Canterbury Community Power Committee.

Beth McQuinn hoped to amend an article to establish a Renewable Energy Capital Reserve Fund to include energy efficiency projects like the library weatherization, but unanswered questions about the wording of the amendment prevailed and the article passed as-is.

The town’s $3,485,250 operating budget passed with few objections. The budget represents a 4.9% increase over last year’s budget with a tax impact of $6.11 per $1,000 of property valuation, or $2,444.63 for a $400,000 home.

Residents commended the town for tamping down the budget’s tax impact by using $500,000 of the town’s savings to ease the pain of December’s tax bill. Select chair Scott Doherty offered assurances that, with almost $1.5 million remaining in the unreserved fund balance, the town’s finances are healthy, but he emphasized that disbursements of this size are not sustainable in the long run.

“While the Select Board uses some unreserved fund balance to reduce taxes almost every year in a system this magnitude is a one-time fix,” Doherty said. “In other  words, we can’t do this again.”