Hinesburg will spend $300K on town hall

Hinesburg will spend $300,000 to stabilize the town hall’s failing roof and reopen the building’s main hall, or the Big Room, which has been closed for nearly two years.

The expense comes as officials acknowledged the town was not in the position, as originally laid out, to spend for a full renovation of the historic building. That project was put on hold after another major item — a wastewater treatment facility — forced the town to reconsider its spending priorities.

But officials at the last selectboard meeting indicated that they felt it was important to get the Big Room back open again.

“This is the least expensive option that we have in front of us,” Joy Dubin Grossman, assistant town manager, said. “It’s allowing us to use the Big Room for a period of time until we are able to make a greater investment in the town hall.”

The town first discovered serious water leaks and “visible movement of the roof line” in the winter of 2022, and asked a local engineer to inspect the slate roof, who told town officials that wooden frame members had bowed and had serious cracking, Grossman said at the time.

Originally built in 1901, there has been no structural work done on the building since 1993. The Big Room, the main meeting room for town officials and the public, has been closed off the fall of 2021.

The $300,000 will temporarily shore up the roof and walls of the area in question, allowing use of the meeting room. But the expenditure remains a temporary fix.

The town had explored a full rehabilitation of the entire building in April and heard proposals from engineering firm Wiemann Lamphere Architects to spend, at a minimum, $3.4 million for improvements to the building, such as structural rehabilitations to the roof, a new elevator, stair components and other improvements to bring the building into ADA compliance.

The preferred renovation to modernize and upgrade the building, including adding more than 12,000 square feet of new construction to the building, would have cost at least $6 million.

But the town put that on hold, after receiving bids well over expectations for the state-mandated wastewater treatment facility. The selectboard has since rejected those bids and are still weighing its options.

Selectboard chair Merrily Lovell last week questioned whether spending the $300,000 would turn into “work that would be undone if we eventually are able to update the town hall the way we like to. Are we throwing money away by doing this temporary fix?” she asked.

Grossman and town manager Todd Odit said the money would allow for the use of the Big Room but said they couldn’t give a definitive answer as to how long the fix would keep the room open.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to give us a definitive answer on how long it’s going to last — you have to add on top of the fact that we have a very old slate roof and that could start leaking again in a year or two,” Odit said. “I would see this as a temporary solution.”

Selectboard members Mike Loner and Paul Lamberson advocated for spending the money to ensure the building remains useable.

Full renovations of town hall included big budget numbers that “I just can’t imagine are going to happen very soon,” Lamberson said.

“If we get five years out of the $300,000 expense before the next major repair is needed, that’s OK with me — (but) we got to get that building back into public use.”

“If the roof does finally fail, it’s not like we’re just losing that one section of the building. We won’t be able to use the (entire) building,” Longer said. “I think we’ve been limping along with an un-useable section of the building long enough.”