Meeting Minutes 10/20/2011

Meeting Minutes - Approved 11/14/2011
Hatfield Public Library Building Committee
Hatfield Public Library
20 October 2011

Present: Dodie Gaudet, Harold Green, Susan Gaughan, Mary Williams, Stephen Hale (architect) and Eliza Langhans (librarian and recording secretary)
Not Present: Jim Phaneuf, Bryan Nicholas

Call to Order: The meeting commenced at 10:10

Approval of Minutes: Deferred to the next meeting.

Special Town Meeting: A Special Town Meeting will be held on November 8th at 7PM at the Building Committee’s request. The Building Committee submitted two articles to the Board of Selectman. The first article asks for $25,000 from the Stabilization fund to be used to redesign the proposed library renovation according to MBLC suggestions. The second article asked for the transfer of the Library’s land parcel to the “care and custody” of the Library Trustees. This article would have allowed us to put the assessed value of the Library parcel (approximately $109,000) into the grant as already secured funds. This would have increased the total cost of the project by $109,000 and, since the MBLC are paying for more than 55% of the project, would have increased the amount of money we received from the MBLC by almost $60,000. However the Board of Selectman were not happy with the second article and felt they had not been given enough advanced warning about it. Dodie attended a Selectboard meeting and explained the benefit of the land transfer ($60,000) and why we were bringing it up at short notice (we only met with the MBLC at the end of September) but they declined to put the article on the warrant. Building Committee efforts will focus on getting votes for the first article since without that it will be difficult to continue the project.

The Committee discussed talking points and how to answer some of the questions which will be posed by voters. Members put together a handout to give to voters. Since the handout will be at the library, we will be careful to “inform but not influence.” Dodie will be writing a persuasive email which can be passed around by private citizens outlining the need to continue the project. The Committee discussed the importance of getting support from the Historical Society. Susan Gaughan will try to arrange a meeting with the Historical Society Board on Saturday the 29th of October.

Meeting adjourned: 11:30AM
Next Meeting: ??