The Gray Town Council held a workshop on August 19 to address a Director
of Economic Development, the future of Stimson Hall, and email correspondence.
Gray has been working without a Director of Economic Development (DED) since early May
when Beth Humphrey resigned. In June the voters approved an additional part-time
position to assist with planning in
the community development /planning department. A lengthy discussion took place over the possibility of combining the two
sets of duties into one position.
Councilors Lewis Mancini and Peter Gellerson were very much in favor of such an
option, while Councilor Lynn Gallagher felt that combining the duties might
spread the person too thin and
compromise the quality of work. Ultimately, the council charged Town Manager Deborah
Cabana to assess the skill sets of
the Planner, Doug Webster and the newly hired code officer, Tom Reinsborough,
and then create a job description for a new employee in the department whose
skills will fill in any gaps.
As it appears that the Monument Square redevelopment
initiative is at a complete stall, the council is back to
considering what to do with the
three municipal properties located on Shaker Road. An RFP for real estate
marketing services saw only one response on which the council took no action. The former town
hall and post office date back to
the 1970s and are vacant and in disrepair, Stimson Hall, the third building on the
property is an historic building,
once serving the Universalist Church which was subsequently donated to Gray for municipal use.
For the past few years, Stimson has been leased to Covenant Family Fellowship whose lease will end
in early fall, thus the town now
needs to address the future of that
building. At its last meeting, the Council decided to
craft a ballot question for the November elections to
see what the public’s wishes are. Cabana presented a draft for discussion at
the workshop. Essentially it is a multiple choice question: 1. Approve and expenditure of up to $500,000 for the purpose of renovating Stimson
Hall with the Town maintaining possession. 2.Dispose of Stimson Hall, which
could include selling and possible demolition of the building.
The consensus of the council was for the manager to fine tune the question making sure to include an estimate of future maintenance costs
along with the initial expenditure estimate and bring it forward at the next
meeting on September 2 for further discussion. During the discussion, chair
Matthew Sturgis expressed his opinion that, due to
their proximity and shared parking, the future of the other two buildings on
the Shaker Road site hinges on the outcome of the Stimson Hall decision. The other
councilor, sans Matt Doughty who was
not at the meeting, shared his opinion and plans to
wait until after the public weighs in on Stimson at the November election
before making any decisions regarding the former town
hall and post office.
Regarding email, Sturgis commented, “I just want to reinforce that email correspondence should be at
a minimum, and that we (the council) should be conducting our business here at
meetings.” He emphasized that he
wasn’t implying that been business had conducted via email, but just wanted to take the opportunity to
remind everyone that emails are public documents should not contain anything
that a councilor wouldn’t say at a public meeting.
The next meeting of the Gray Town Council is
September 2 at 7 p.m.