A Barre building that will bring the Vermont Agency of Education’s 170 employees under one roof is already generating controversy.
State and Barre officials met with education agency staff Tuesday in an attempt to quell concerns about everything from parking to crime. The event, organized by the Vermont State Employees Association and the Shumlin administration, was held in the Paramount Theater, one door down from AOE’s future office space on North Main Street.
State Buildings and General Services Commissioner Michael Obuchowski, Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon, Barre Police Chief Tim Bombardier, and local state Reps. Paul Poirier and Tess Taylor all showed up to stave off the discontent that’s been percolating among staff. Department of Environmental Conservation staff, an environmental consultant, and the president of the construction company were also on hand to field questions about the four-story building and its surroundings.
Tropical Storm Irene flooded the State Office Complex in Waterbury in August 2011, setting into motion the reshuffling of state agencies. AOE employees in offices in Montpelier and Berlin weren’t displaced, but the state is consolidating them as part of a larger post-Irene reorganization.
The plan is to put the entire agency on the third and fourth floors of the City Place building, along with some Agency of Human Services employees. The state will lease about 50,000 square feet of the 80,000-square-foot building, paying roughly $1 million a year in rent — $120,000 more than the state now spends to house AOE employees.
City and state officials have lauded the project as a paragon of downtown revitalization, but some employees have shown reluctance to be the pioneers of Barre’s renaissance.
Secretary of Education Armando Vilaseca is a big supporter of the move, which is slated for next year. Having employees spread between two locations has been “really difficult,” he said. He told staff Tuesday that the event would not be a forum for complaints.
“In my mind, this was not a meeting about concerns … any concerns we’ve had have been addressed,” he said. “… Really, this was an opportunity to see where we are going to be.”
But after Vilaseca spoke, staff peppered officials with inquiries that ranged from the dangers of petroleum pollution discovered 10 feet below the building to stringent parking meter enforcement.
The site is on the Department of Environmental Conservation’s hazardous site list, but a state official and an environmental consultant assured the AOE staff that they aren’t at risk. The space, which has been home to a skating rink, a bowling alley, restaurants, and retail stores, is contaminated with a dry cleaning solvent and a petroleum contaminant that is a byproduct of burning coal and wood. A consultant from Environmental Compliance Services Inc., which was hired to remedy the problem, said they are installing an apparatus that diverts harmful vapors from the soil. Lynda Provencher, program chief for DEC’s Hazardous Waste Management Program, said that will solve the problem.
Lauzon and Bombardier addressed a number of questions about crime levels in Barre City. The police chief refuted data from the website citydata.com that showed Barre’s crime rate dwarfing the national average and rates in other Vermont cities. Bombardier said citydata.com drew data based on ZIP codes, skewing results by including crimes stats from nearby towns. Citing statistics from the Vermont Criminal Information Center, Bombardier said Barre City’s crime rate per capita is lower than those in other Vermont cities, including Montpelier and Burlington. Bombardier also noted the low number of sexual assault reports — one in 2010, one in 2011, four in 2012, and one so far in 2013.
Another major concern is parking — the lot reserved for AOE staff is across the street and behind a shed, and some employees expressed concerns about car thefts. Bombardier said Barre City had a rash of car thefts a few years ago, but most of those vehicles had been unlocked.
The parking lot is owned by Mayor Thom Lauzon. None of the AOE employees asked Lauzon about potential conflicts of interest, but he addressed the issue, unprompted. He said he currently makes $26,000 in rent from the building on that lot (the building will be demolished to make way for parking); the state will pay him $25,000 in rent for the lot.
Lauzon said some perceive “some deal between the governor and I,” but that isn’t the case. His company owned the City Place property, but Lauzon said he divested it when the state expressed interest in housing employees there — an idea that Lauzon first planted with Building and General Services officials before Tropical Storm Irene.
Asked why he didn’t also divest the parking lot, Lauzon said the sale would have been complicated, it would have looked more unethical than holding on to it, and he might have lost money.
“I wasn’t necessarily inclined to sell it, because I don’t sell anything but more importantly, it’s like how squishy does that look when, because of City Place, I get a check for $250,000. I’m not trying to make more money on this deal, but I don’t really want to make less.”
Wendy Magee, an IT manager for AOE, said the meeting didn’t allay all her concerns. She said she personally wouldn’t reap any benefits from the consolidation, and the additional $120,000 a year strikes her as an unnecessary expense.
Another AOE employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said the event addressed a number of concerns that have been circulating among staff, and it was encouraging to see the administration willing to address them.
