The potential sale of the Four Corners Children’s Center in Hartland to the Windsor Early Childhood Education Center is on hold while the town completes asbestos, lead, and radon safety evaluations of the municipally owned building at 29 Brownsville Road.
Following the testing and reporting, which is expected to be concluded within a month, the town selectboard will take up the matter of extending the customary one-year lease of the former municipal activities center building in Hartland Four Corners to a three-year term, as requested by Windsor Early Childhood Education Center staff and board members as a condition of executing a purchase and sale agreement with the 25-year-old Four Corners childcare facility’s owner.
The Hartland Selectboard has traditionally okayed one-year leases annually effective July 1 for both the Four Corners Children’s Center, which operates in the basement of the one-time town activities center facility, and the Hartland Cooperative Nursery School, which occupies the back portion of the first floor of the town-owned Hartland Recreation Center at 19 Vermont Route 12.
At its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, June 30, the selectboard heard from Valerie Raney, the two-decades-plus proprietor and president of the Four Corners Children’s Center, and families who have children enrolled at the childcare center concerning the interest of Windsor Early Childcare Center officials in negotiating a three-year lease on the town-held property if the proposed sale goes through. Extensive public comments and discussion focused on concerns expressed by Hartland town manager John Broker-Campbell and selectboard members concerning lease terms and duration, the number of children attending the Four Corners program, child and public safety, and ongoing town responsibilities for maintenance of the former activities center facility.
In the end, the selectboard voted unanimously to extend the lease with the Four Corners Children’s Center for six months, effective July 1, while the issues of environmental testing and the potential sale and longer-term lease negotiations are resolved.
For more on this, please see our July 10 edition of the Vermont Standard.
