The hour and 15 minutes it took the Marion Community Preservation Committee to officially understand and acknowledge receipt of 10 pitches for FY23 Community Preservation Act funding will be dwarfed by the time it takes to fully scrutinize each application.
“Pack a lunch, maybe a breakfast,” said CPC Chairman Jeff Doubrava only half-jokingly. Doubrava told the committee members to be prepared to spend at least three hours when the formal presentations are made in a public hearing to be held on Friday, February 18, at 5:00 pm. The CPC will continue the public hearing and vote on the requests on Friday, March 4, at 5:00 pm.
The February 4 meeting that acquainted the committee with the applicants and their projects needed one peculiar vote to decide whether to accept an application that failed to meet the 4:00 pm deadline on the day of the meeting.
That application, submitted by the National History Museum for $41,500 to be used by June 1, 2023, arrived at 3:55 pm but lacked basic information such as the project summary and the amount of funding requested. Notified of the missing elements, the completed application was received at 4:15 pm.
In light of the immediate effort to correct the oversight, CPC members Deb Ewing, Will Tifft and Alanna Nelson voiced support for the application’s consideration, and a unanimous vote entered it among the other nine requests.
FY23 requests totaled $595,761, and Doubrava said the CPC has the money to fund all the projects. That doesn’t mean it will or fully in the amounts requested. That will be determined after the public hearing.
Marion Facilities Manager Shaun Cormier made two requests, one for $124,000 (to be spent by the end of 2022) for design and bidding documents for the installation of a sprinkler system and ADA upgrades to the Town House and the second for completion of the annex building’s Main Street Entrance at $240,000.
Cormier told the committee that Marion is prohibited from continuing any further work on the Town House until it has achieved ADA compliance in public-access areas. “We’ve invested way too much money in this building over the last few years to leave it unprotected,” he said.
The CPC has a bone to pick with projects that drag out, leaving awards stagnant and unspent. To that end, a regulation was recently added, putting a time limit on applicants to spend awarded funds or else they return them to the CPC. With this at the forefront of his mind, Doubrava asked for an update on an unspent $268,000 that was allocated for Town House restoration two years ago.
Noting that $40,000 has been spent on the Town House basement, Cormier said, “This is a two-phase project. … In order to save the town a half-million dollars, we have to do a lot of the work in-house.”
The means by which much of the work is being carried out has slowed the timeframe. “Each project will take about a year,” said Cormier, comparing the situation to that of the Music Hall. “Things that need to be contracted out have to be scheduled. I’m having a hard time finding labor.” Cormier said he has a plan to finish the work by the end of the summer.
“This is why we have a time limit on CPA funds,” said Doubrava.
The Main Street Entrance, recently shored up with steel platforms and beams as a short-term solution, will be torn down, its circa 1940 granite steps to be reused in a reconstruction meant to ease the climb while eliminating the side bulkheads that were added much earlier in the building’s life for Tabor Academy students’ access to shop class.
Making a point to note that the Main Street entrance is not original to the building, Marion Historical Commission Chair Meg Steinberg said that the redesign is in keeping with what the commission considers appropriate. “It will look a lot nicer than it does right now and will be easy to navigate,” she said.
The Historical Commission’s own application for $30,000 in CPA funding for its next phase of survey work on properties on Delano Road, Converse Road, Spring Street, West Avenue, Point Road and Planting Island was met with a philosophical question.
Citing use of the phrase “in perpetuity” during the initial presentation, Doubrava suggested the effort be incorporated in the town’s operating budget. “As a townsperson, if it’s an ongoing every-year (project,) I think it should be a line item in the budget,” he said.
The application’s work phase is scheduled to begin in spring 2023 and to be completed by December 31, 2024. Meantime, Steinberg explained that the Historical Commission still has $30,000 from its last CPC award and expects information on February 18 that will aid in completing the spending of the former award.
Nelson and CPC member Margie Baldwin agreed that the commission’s survey work should not be a line item.
Leslie Piper, the executive director and archivist for the Sippican Historical Society, was on hand to introduce her application for $25,000 (to be spent by June 30, 2023) to contract a professional archivist to preserve, digitize and professionally store two collections of 19th century letters she considers to be “at risk,” along with two and possibly three collections of family photographs. The unprotected letters are in cursive handwriting.
Piper told the CPC that the $35,000 in past grants will be spent by June on current archival efforts. She said she had not been aware of separate funding of $18,400 and $17,000. “This is something we will follow up on and have an answer for at the next meeting,” said Tifft, who also serves as SHS president and on the town’s Historical Commission.
Other applications came in from the Marion Garden Group ($75,000 for irrigation systems at five locations,) the Town of Marion Cushing Community Center Working Group Subsector 3 ($26,811 for fencing, benches and litter/recycling receptacles for the walking path,) the Marion Pathways Committee ($18,000 for eight easements including temporary construction easements and permanent easements) and two from the town’s Open Space Acquisition Commission. MOSAC applied for $8,600 to update its resiliency criteria for the first time since 1995 and for $1,850 to enact its Great Swamp forestry plan.
In other business, the committee voted to pay a $1,750 invoice for CPA membership dues.
The next meeting of the Marion Community Preservation Committee will be held on Friday, February 18, at 5:00 pm.
Marion Community Preservation Committee
By Mick Colageo