By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
NEWPORT — Newport voters will have the opportunity again in May to decide whether to construct a new town recreation center after a three year wait.
The Newport Selectboard voted unanimously Monday night to return an article to next year’s town warrant asking voters to approve a bond to build a new community center in Meadow Row Park. The project is estimated to cost around $7 million. The town expects to raise at least $3 million in private donations to offset the cost, leaving the taxpayers with a bond payment of around $4 million.
“I really think it’s time,” said Selectman Herbert Tellor. “The old center has done its job [but] it’s getting to be more of a problem than a benefit to the town.”
The current center, located at 65 Belknap Ave., is nearly 100 years old, requires substantial rehabilitation and is too small to accommodate many of the community’s needs.
“The community center has over 80,000 visits per year,” said Larry Flint, chair of the Recreation Advisory Community. “Think about that wear and tear on your community center.”
Flint, the former town recreation director, said usage of the facility has grown extensively over the years, with programs serving residents of all ages, including the senior population.
The proposal will closely resemble what went before voters in 2019, which voters rejected by a vote of 443 in favor and 553 against. But town officials attributed that outcome largely to the rush to put the question onto the warrant, without allocating sufficient time to educate residents about the project.
By committing now to pose the question next year, proponents expect to have ample time to educate residents and market the project’s benefits. The town Community Center Committee, who studied the community center’s needs in 2019, are already in process of hiring a marketing firm to help educate residents about the cost rationale and overall benefits to the town.
Proponents for the project reluctantly shelved the proposal in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic and ensuing concerns about the future economy.
Just two months ago, the proposal appeared to be heading again for another year of dormancy. In September stakeholders initially decided against posing the question on next year’s warrant due to concern about competing with the Newport School District’s proposal to fund a $15.4 million renovation of the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center.
The school district’s project is a one in a generation opportunity to renovate their 30 year-old vocational school building with a state commitment to cover 75 percent of the construction cost. Additional grants and donations, including $2.1 million in emergency and secondary schools emergency relief funding, is expected to reduce the town’s estimated tax portion by $1.9 million.
But town officials and stakeholders — who also support the tech-center renovation — reconsidered, once concluding that a year’s deferral would add zero fiscal benefit while adding greater burden to fund it.
Construction costs are already estimated to be $500,000 for the project now than in 2019 and industry officials estimate construction costs will continue to inflate in upcoming years by an annual rate of at least 5 percent.
Additionally town officials anticipate that many private donors who pledged in 2019 to fund the new community center — totaling about $1.7 million — will withdraw their money if the proposal remains shelved.
“It becomes a question of ‘If not now, then when?’” said Selectman John Hooper. “It’s something that needs to be done and we’re not likely to have another opportunity again. And we will all be kicking ourselves if we don’t do it.”
Selectman Barry Connell, a former Newport school superintendent, stressed the need for town officials to work closely with the school system to publicly advocate for both projects.
“To me that’s essential,” Selectman Barry Connell reiterated on Monday. “I’ve seen it before, where we split or one of us says they are not going to vote for the [other’s proposal]. So we need to work together to find some commonality, because both projects need to go forward.”
The proposed new recreation center would have more than twice the square footage of the current facility and twice the gymnasium size. The Community Center Committee determined that building anew was the most fiscally practical of the options it explored, which included whether to renovate the Towle gymnasium and ground floor for town use or to renovate the existing center.
According to the town committee, renovating the Towle building would cost more than the construction of a new center. Renovating the existing facility, which was last estimated in 2019 at a cost around $2.9 million, would only address needed repairs and accessibility upgrades but not address the space inadequacy.
In a related item, Selectboard Chair Jeffrey Kessler said that Newport’s newest tax rate calculation shows a decrease of about ten cents per $1,000 of assessed property, on both the town and school sides of the tax bill, and Kessler expects the tax rate to be further benefitted next year following the town’s scheduled reevaluation, given the surging prices on homes and properties across the region.
Assuming the town and school district can keep their next budgets cost-neutral, residents should anticipate a decrease in their taxes, which could help absorb the impact of the two building projects, according to Kessler.
reporter @eagletimes.com
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