In a special town meeting slated for Wednesday, July 23 at 7 p.m. to be held via floor vote, residents of the town of Barnard will vote again to decide whether or not BarnArts should be allowed to lease the old Barnard Fire Department building for a period of fifteen years, with an option to renew for an additional fifteen years, at an annual rent of $1.
This will be the second time Barnard will vote on this issue. The first vote took place in March, resulting in the town originally voting in favor of BarnArts securing the leasing rights to the building. However, according to selectboard vice chair Richard Lancaster, due to issues within the lease agreement, more conversation was required between the selectboard and Linda Treash, executive director of BarnArts. Now a new and improved lease will go before the town in a special meeting.
Lancaster told the Standard, “The reason for the revote is mostly because the selectboard does not want to act independently regarding the leasing of public land to an organization. The town has a right to be involved each step of the way. Unfortunately, in the process of creating the lease agreement, there were issues that kept cropping up as time went on. The initial vote was held during a town meeting in March, with a very rudimentary lease document. Hearings followed this vote, but throughout the process, a mutually agreeable lease did not come to fruition until recently. With respect to that and the fact that we made changes to the initial leasing document, we wanted to make sure that the current, proper lease is presented to the people and voted on.”
For more on this, please see our June 26 edition of the Vermont Standard.
