NORTH HERO — Voters in this Grand Isle County town are slated to head back to the polls this spring to decide whether to rescind their approval of the municipal budget.
At issue is whether North Hero’s fiscal year 2023 budget should include money to move the town offices to the North Hero Community Hall, a building adorned with columns in the town’s village center next door to Hero’s Welcome, a popular general store.
The hall’s current owner, the North Hero Historical Society, wants to donate the building — which housed town offices more than a decade ago — to the town government. Currently, the town offices are located several miles north in a portion of North Hero’s K-6 school.
At a sometimes contentious North Hero Selectboard meeting Monday, which had been moved to the school’s gym to accommodate dozens of attendees, several residents said they did not support the move to the community hall, arguing it was not in a good location and that town officials should put the reacquisition of the building to a vote.
Among them was Andre Quintin, a former selectboard member, who told his contemporaries he planned to seek a court injunction to block the transfer of the community hall to the town government because he believes there are lingering questions about the viability of the property and how much it will cost to maintain.
Quintin referred VTDigger to his lawyer, Hans Huessy, for more information about the injunction.
Huessy said Wednesday a request for an injunction would be filed before the end of the week in Grand Isle County Superior Court if officials did not comply with a March 29 petition, signed by about 65 voters, that asks the town to “reconsider and/or rescind” the Town Meeting Day ballot article that asked voters to approve the FY23 budget.
The petition is legally binding, Huessy said, because it met the requirements for reconsidering or rescinding a ballot article under Vermont law.
The North Hero clerk’s office said Wednesday the town is eyeing late May for a vote on whether to rescind the budget, though a date had not yet been finalized.
North Hero’s FY23 budget, which totaled about $1 million and was approved 177-41 on Town Meeting Day, included just under $70,000 in funding for the community hall.
Of that, $24,000 was slated for building improvements, and about $32,000 was slated for annual maintenance, according to an operating budget for the facility.
Provided that voters approved the funding on Town Meeting Day, the selectboard had agreed to complete a deed transfer for the community hall with the historical society, according to meeting minutes from the committee formed last August to study the project.
The committee’s work included an architectural analysis of the building, which last fall found it to be in “really excellent condition” for its age. The analysis found no serious issues with the building, but identified up to roughly $65,000 of additional work for the town to complete either in the short or long term.
Ultimately, the committee determined that the community hall would be “an adequate and economical home for the town offices,” according to a webpage on the project.
The community hall was deemed unsuitable to house town offices in 2005 because it was in a state of disrepair, according to a committee report. Two years later, the report says, the town’s historical society acquired the building and started to renovate it.
Inside, the 1930s building has a large auditorium space.
When town offices were moved out of the hall in 2005, they went first into the basement of a local couple’s house, then several years later were moved into the North Hero Elementary School.
But sharing space with town officials has become challenging for the school, Michael Inners, chair of the Champlain Islands Unified School District’s board, said Monday.
Space is already tight on the campus, Inners said: Classes are combined for first and second grade, third and fourth grade, and fifth and sixth grade; books have to be shelved in the hallways; and teachers don’t have a dedicated preparation space.
“We’ve managed to work around this in a number of ways — none of which are really good for education,” he told the selectboard and meeting attendees.
If the town offices were moved out, the area they used would serve two main roles for the school, Inners said: a dedicated library and media center, plus space for teaching special subjects such as music, art and world languages.
Inners noted the school district approached the town about the need for more rooms a year and a half ago, adding that “it’s important for us to get that space.”
At Monday’s meeting, Harry Parker, the North Hero Selectboard chair, said the historical society intends to give the community hall (which has an assessed value of more than $1 million) to the town for free. The building would come with a roughly $800,000 endowment, he added, which officials could use to fund future maintenance at the site.
Parker maintained that, considering the school’s need for more space and the pending offer from the historical society, the best decision for the town as a whole would be to move its offices to the community hall.
“We’ve worked on what we believe is the most viable, time-sensitive option,” he said.
In the lead-up to Town Meeting Day, some 85 people signed a petition, filed Feb. 28, asking town officials to hold a vote on the community hall move. The signatories also asked town officials to publish more information about the project.
The selectboard declined to act on the petition at its meeting March 7, minutes show. At the time, Parker said the town had been transparent, noting that residents could have attended any community hall committee meeting to share their thoughts.
He also said that the funding needed to facilitate the move was added to the budget published in the most recent town report, which was mailed to every voter.
Quintin contended that the outsize showing Monday evening, as well as at the board’s previous meeting on March 21 when the proposed town office move also was discussed, showed that people want more details on the project.
A half-page advertisement published last week in the Champlain Islands’ local weekly newspaper, The Islander, encouraged residents to attend the Monday meeting and to sign the petition asking the town to rescind the budget. The ad was “paid for by concerned North Hero voters,” it read.
Residents at the meeting also asked if the town had considered other locations to build a new structure for the municipal offices, rather than move into the community hall. They also raised concerns about a lack of parking in and around the village area.
In response, Parker said the town is hesitant to take on a major construction project during the pandemic because of the increased cost of materials.
And he added that, while parking can be a challenge in the village, the time of year when the town offices would get the most use — Town Meeting Day — would not correspond with the busy summer tourism season.
