Apryl Blood wants to set the record straight. To start, she has numbers. 

In May, Warner Connects, the local food pantry, served 969 meals to 124 households.

Come June, pantry volunteers distributed 1,400 meals to 167 households. 

In a place like Warner, where visitors flock annually for a Fall Foliage Festival and residents have a long history of community engagement, persistent issues like food insecurity often remain under the radar. 

For four decades, though, a food pantry has operated out of the Main Street building, for free. 

That’s now no longer. The Town of Warner has a new price tag for the space – $20,000 annually. 

Despite longstanding agreements with town leaders that these social services would be subsidized in the town-owned building, a dire need for maintenance and an external evaluation has led the select board to write up lease agreements with the tenants. 

For nonprofit organizations like Warner Connects, which operates a food pantry in the basement or thrift store on the first floor, and GearUp Homeschoolers, which has classroom space on the top floor, small budgets dependent on donations mean that this new rental price tag could amount to an eviction notice. 

Meeting after meeting of select board members, old and new, have woven a complicated timeline of events. And competing visions for the town owned space, bring to question what is the heart of the community center. 

“What is this building used for? Is it a community service? Is it for community service and helping people in town? Or is it going to be something for profit?" said Patty Anderson, a longstanding Warner Connects volunteer, who operates the Family Closet thrift store. 

Breaking point 

At Tuesday's select board meeting, the typical handful of attendees was replaced by a packed room of residents filling rows of plastic chairs. In the front row, sat Blood, the vice chair of the organization’s board, was ready to clear the air about Warner Connects role in the community. 

She’d sat through a handful of meetings prior, watching the select board discuss the terms of their contract. With each meeting, the issue became divisive among town leaders amid a swirl of conjecture. 

In one meeting, it was suggested Warner Connects was going to close its doors when it was fully functional. In another, a select board member proposed a different organization to take its place. And in another, a lease was voted on with no input from the organization’s leaders. 

So on Tuesday, when public comment was underway, it was Blood’s turn to bring Warner Connects to the forefront of conversation. 

“It’s been a little frustrating in past meetings that consistently wrong information is being put in the public eye,” Blood said. 

Leading the meeting was Harry Seidel, the newly elected select board chairman, who for the last two weeks was the town’s only selectman after his two counterparts handed in their resignations citing town dysfunction.

With a PowerPoint presentation pulled up on the screen behind him, Seidel wanted to provide his own take on the turmoil that’s engulfed the town. The dispute among select board members stemmed from a lease change with the food pantry related to the fire code. 

On June 30, former select board member Christine Frost met with Blood to sign a lease for the community center space. At the prior meeting, Frost, Jody Sloane and Seidel voted on a six-month lease with the food pantry, of $400 per month, through the end of December. 

When Frost and Blood sat down, Warner Connects wanted to address a few concerns about hallway storage, maintenance responsibilities and custodial care. They then signed a lease.

“We continued on thinking, ‘okay, we've signed a contract in good faith, we're moving forward. This is great,’” said Blood.

That negotiation would be one of Frost’s last on the board. At the next meeting, Seidel made it clear the contract was no longer valid, as she changed one paragraph allowing the pantry to store items in the hallway during off hours without the consideration of other members. 

He also announced he’d no longer entertain a lease with the food pantry, as he’d lost trust with the organization’s leadership. 

Frost resigned the next day, with Sloane following shortly thereafter. 

And in his first meeting at the helm, with a quorum restored on the board thanks to the appointment of Faith Minton, Seidel took time to explain the fire code violations that were removed from the lease that led to the breakdown of town government.  

That was part of the misinformation Blood wanted to clarify. 

“Our lease was null and void because we were breaking fire code. We have never ever wanted to break fire code,” she said. “I just want to make that clear.” 

But to understand the full scope of what Blood wanted to correct, she pointed back to her first meeting with Warner’s town leaders in May. 

On the Friday before Memorial Day, Blood was called to Town Hall for an emergency select board meeting.

She had joined Warner Connects in April, to help them navigate an investigation by the charitable trust unit of the attorney general’s office. As a part of the investigation, Blood was working on a 501(c)(3) application for the organization so that they would be a registered nonprofit with the state. 

It was a process that had taken her 60 hours in four days, detailing the organization’s entire inventory since it’s inception in 2020. And it was due before June 1. 

But on that Friday, Seidel called the meeting to talk about alternative services in case Warner Connects closed its doors. 

“I was floored about the emergency because there was no emergency,” said Blood. 

Despite the investigation, there was no talk of closing the organization. Blood and others were committed to following the ten recommendations provided by the attorney general’s office to return Warner Connects to good standing with the state. 

“It was all about concerns for how the community is going to handle it when we close,” Blood said. “I had no idea what was happening. I've been working down there patching up everything that needs to be done.”

On July 13, the attorney general’s office sent a formal letter to Warner Connects confirming that it had returned to good standing with the state. One employee, who is no longer with the organization, remains under investigation. 

But in the intermittent months where the organization was in transition, Blood watched as town leaders questioned the food pantry and its purpose in town. 

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Blood provided a full timeline of events, which included an unexpected notice in May that all community center tenants would have to sign formal lease agreements with the town to continue to utilize their space.

Warner Community Center

Just down Main Street from Warner Town Hall, sits the community center, which held its grand opening in 1910 as a modern school building at the time. 

Now, 113 years later, it’s home to several community organizations, including childcare and homeschool centers and a Community Action Program. 

In exchange for provide their services to Warner residents and surrounding community members who are often most in need, the organizations have paid little to no rent to utilize the building. 

On May 18, tenants were informed they would be required to sign a lease with the town with rent determined by the square footage used by each organization.

“We are truly grateful for the services that you provide for the Town of Warner,” read the letter, signed by town administrator Diane Ricciardelli. “We are also charged with ensuring that the building is maintained in a way that provides the citizens of Warner with a valued asset for many years in the future.” 

That value has slowly deteriorated with years of deferred maintenance catching up. On the third floor of the building, where GearUp Homeschoolers is housed, there is no running water. The building is not handicap accessible, with a rickety wooden ramp offering the only access point from the back door. And on the front steps orange plastic netting marks off the right side of the staircase where bricks are currently dislodged. 

In the town’s annual budget, which was voted on by residents at Town Meeting in March, almost $25,000 is set aside for the building. Of this amount, $5,000 is for maintenance, $9,500 for heating and fuel and another $7,000 for electricity. 

But in the letter to building tenants about impending leases, Riccardelli wrote that the annual building costs are estimated to be $58,000. 

When asked at a select board meeting on June 20 about the $30,000 discrepancy between the town’s budget and estimated building costs, Ricciardelli said the added expenses cover the time that she and the public works department put in to manage the building. 

Within the building, tenants occupy just over 6,000 square feet of space. Rent was determined to be $9.71 per square foot, according to select board calculations. 

That meant an annual rent of over $20,000, for Warner Connects as they utilize just over 2,000 square feet of space.  

For almost four decades, a food pantry has operated out of that space without paying much, if any, rent. 

Now, the Economic Development Advisory Committee – another volunteer committee in town that Seidel sits on – have different ideas for the space, including adding a maker space, adult education space, conference rooms, or art gallery, among others. In the town annual report for 2022, the committees' update focused on their building improvement suggestions. 

To assess the square footage of the building, the committee hired Sheerr McCrystal Palson Architecture from Concord. In an April report, the firm provided recommendations on necessary maintenance and building management – one of which was a formal lease agreement with each tenant.

Other suggestions included the town welfare office relocating into the building, to provide staff oversight to the town owned space. 

But in the meantime, rent for Warner Connects is a new expense for an organization that provided $100,000 in services last year. 

“Any money we pay towards a lease is fine, but it comes out of services that we’re providing,” said Blood.  

4,000% increase

On the top floor of the building, a Peter Pan mural decorates the corner of one wall, while wooden cubbies line another. It's a classroom of sorts – where artwork is hung on the walls and books line shelves. For the last ten years, it’s served as a meeting space for homeschoolers, mimicking the space of a traditional school setting. 

For some parents, homeschooling means planned field trips to museums and parks. Sometimes, they’ll see other homeschoolers there. More often than not it’s a one-off encounter for kids to connect. 

But thanks to GearUp Homeschoolers, a nonprofit that provides programming for children in the area, the third floor of the Warner Community Center provides consistency to a student’s at-home schedule – designated class time and a familiar setting for kids to learn and engage with each other.

Since 2014, it’s been a resource for over 30 families. And to do so, the nonprofit has had a memorandum of understanding with the town to use the community center space, coupled with an annual $400 check. 

GearUp charges families $75 a semester for their weekly programming. But if a finances are a barrier, waivers are available. 

The May letter to building tenants meant an increase from $400 to $18,585 a year for GearUp. 

Last year, the organization took in just over $5,000. 

It’s a price tag that’s unfeasible. And without compromise, the organization will vacate the building its historically used, according to board president Erika Carr. 

The new rent amount is a 4,000% increase over what the organization previously paid, Carr told select board members at their June 6 meeting. 

GearUp just signed a sixth month lease agreement with rent at $200 a month. In December, they’ll revisit the terms with the select board, to set a year long lease for 2024. 

It’s a delayed dilemma. But at least it’s set for the next six months. Due to the dispute with the Warner Connects food pantry, no such luxury exists.

Reaching an agreement 

Back in the basement of Warner Town Hall on June 20, Blood arrived with a lease proposal in hand. 

The first request was that the town waive the rent. Other surrounding towns do not charge food pantries for their space, the letter read, and in order to provide food and clothing for the community, they’d like the volunteer organization to not inherent new fees. 

Blood also had line by line edits to address. 

However, when the select board convened to discuss the lease terms, building tenants were not given the chance to speak. Blood and Anderson both sat there, watching Frost, Seidel and Sloane propose and shoot down different lease amounts with no input. 

For Warner Connects, the board agreed on $400 a month for six months, with the intent that this would provide ample time for the organization to understand the scope of their finances. This was the lease agreement that Blood signed with Frost, before it was voided. 

Similar to GearUp, even if Warner Connects has a clear sense of their finances by December, records from previous years show that a $20,000 rent will be an unfeasible amount. 

In 2022, the organization ended with just over $9,000 in hand. To Blood, those are already razor thin margins. If a fridge or freezer breaks, that will consume all the cash on hand. 

But after publicly stating that he would not entertain a lease with Warner Connects, Seidel said he has changed his mind. After reading the letter from the attorney general’s office into the meeting minutes, something which Blood repeatedly asked to happen, a new path forward emerged. 

“This is a very very important piece of information,” he said at the meeting. “I am just super happy that the Town of Warner has this. Now I think that we can move forward, and we would like to move forward.” 

To Blood, moving forward would be continuing to maintain open communication about the lease agreement with the town. But when Warner Connects was placed on the agenda Tuesday night, she wasn’t notified the contract would be back up for discussion. 

Next, Blood and Warner Connects board members will meet with Minton and Seidel. The lease in question is $400 month, for six months. And ahead of new negotiations in December, the select board has also agreed to host monthly meetings with community center tenants to better understand their needs in the building. 

“We just want to stay and continue to provide the services we’re providing,” said Blood. 

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