Emotions have heated up in Greensboro over the RuralEdge proposal to create an affordable housing development in the current town hall and former school, an historic building.
While there are clearly bad actors involved in defacing signs and perhaps in removing some of them, most others are acting with the best of intentions, which in our democratic society, is how we share our opinions and work to achieve consensus.
A group calling themselves the “Save Town Hall Coalition,” suggests the select board has acted in bad faith with a lack of transparency, intentionally failing to share what’s happening with the process and failing to solicit public input.
It’s curious that the building is now the center of renewed interest.
It has received little in preventative maintenance and no renovations to make it energy efficient, for example, since it was saved from the wrecking ball sometime in the late 1970s, or perhaps 1980s, roughly 40 years ago.
A plan to further renovate the building then, never rose high enough on the list that it was funded.
The building now costs far more to maintain than town offices warrant.
While it was available and necessary some 30 years ago, when the school next door was overflowing with students, the uppermost floor is unusable and half the ground floor is now mostly unused.
While “Save Town Hall” signs suggest turning it into housing won’t be saving it, others see the redevelopment project as being the way to save the building and put it to what they deem a necessary use; adding housing within walking distance of Greensboro’s town center.
A redevelopment project such as the one being proposed will most certainly require the attention of the town’s zoning administrator and development review board, both of which may require alterations and changes to the project. That work normally occurs prior to there being anything concrete to vote on and almost necessarily will be on a timeline difficult to predict.
It would be unwise for RuralEdge to commit to the project, or enter into an agreement to purchase the property, until it has approvals in hand, thus the project is effectively still in the preliminary design phase.
The town’s current agreement with RuralEdge is simply not to do anything else with the property until December of this year. It does not commit the town to taking any particular course of action with regard to the property in question.
While some members of the coalition seem to believe that agreement precludes considering other options for the building, the agreement doesn’t appear to commit the town to entering into a final agreement with RuralEdge.
It seems there’s still time to take everyone’s point of view into consideration before any final decision is made. That’s most likely to happen if cooler heads prevail and accusations of malfeasance can be resolved amicably. In the current climate, that seems unlikely.
Then there are those bad actors, whose actions it behooves us all to help curtail, as any behavior that divides us as reliable and trustworthy humans only feeds the flames of divisiveness.
This version of the editorial differs slightly from what appears in the August 21 PDF version due to edits made to improve readability.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
