WOODSTOCK — The Board of Selectmen agreed Tuesday evening to reach out to the Maine Department of Transportation to see how much their old state highway garage would cost if they paid for it in full instead of with installments.
At the beginning of the year, Lorrinda Connelly and Norm Haggan with the Maine Department of Transportation offered the 40-by-80-foot building to the town for $125,000, with several payment options to choose from.
The building hasn’t been used since the state built another building in Dixfield 10 years ago.
The board voted against pursuing the building during a March selectmen’s meeting.
However, at Tuesday evening’s board meeting, Selectman Mike Nadeau, who was elected to the Board of Selectmen after it decided to forego purchasing the MDOT building, pointed out that the building was still for sale.
Town Manager Vern Maxfield said that MDOT had offered the building for $125,000, but if the town was willing to cut a check rather than participating in a payment program, the price of the building “could be substantially lower.”
“That’s a pretty big building, and I’ve been thinking about a lot of the equipment that we’ve invested money in,” Nadeau said. “We could use the building to house some of our vehicles. Right now, we’re just leaving them outside. We could have a building to store them.”
Selectman Stephen Bies originally said that the board viewed the building as being a workspace.
“I don’t think we saw it as a storage space initially,” Bies said, adding that any trucks leaving the building would be “pulling out into a really bad spot.”
Nadeau suggested that the board investigate how much MDOT would charge if the town were to pay for the building outright, rather than setting up a payment plan.
“There’s no way we could construct a building that big,” Nadeau said. “If we could get it for cheap, we might as well look into it.”
“It won’t cost us a nickel to gather information,” Selectman Ronald Deegan said.
Maxfield said that he always thought the MDOT building would be beneficial to the town.
“I think we ended up talking ourselves out of it back in March,” Maxfield said to Deegan.
“Sure, but we had bigger fish to fry at the time,” Deegan replied.
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