Editor’s note: this article was updated on October 17 to correct erroneous statements about the third option now being developed, and about the approval margin required for selection of a preferred option at the December 2 Special Town Meeting.
Based on resident feedback, architects will put aside the two-story 75% community center option and substitute another option in the 50%-to-75% price range ($12.5 million to $18.75 million).
Residents saw presentations of four options at the State of the Town meeting on September 30 and ranked them in order of preference in person via a total of 524 paper and online survey responses. (Note: the drawings at the bottom of the September 28 article headlined “Community center options readied for SOTT” have been updated to show the labels that were inadvertently omitted earlier.)
Results of the SOTT and online surveys collected by the CCBC (click to enlarge).
The 100% option got the highest number of first-choice votes but also the highest number of “I would not vote for this option” entries, with the two cohorts almost canceling each other out. The two-story 75% option got the fewest first-place votes. None of the four in the poll reached the 67% that will be required for eventual funding approval in March; a vote on the preferred option at the Special Town Meeting on December 2 requires only a simple majority. The CBCC analysis, along with replies as to why the respondents voted the way they did, can be found here.
The Community Center Building Committee delved further into the data on October 1 as they tried to discern what sort of proposal could get over the finish line. If the two-story 75% option were taken off the table and the SOTT survey were reranked and recounted, the one-story 75% option would get 65.8%. The data also showed that this option might get a 73% “yes” share if the 100% option were also theoretically removed from consideration.
The current plan is to present four options to residents on December 2:
- The current 100% option, “tightened up” to trim some cost and reduce the size of the large community gathering space
- The current 75% one-story option
- A third option comprising a slimmed-down version of the 75% one-story option that would be smaller and less expensive but also includes renovation of the LEAP pod
- The current 50% with some “modest adjustments”
The CCBC also considered discarding the 100% option but decided against it. “You’re doing the town a disservice if you don’t continue the work” to refine that option along with the others, committee member Rob Stringer said. “I think we deserve to have a look at the 100%… A lot of people said they would vote for it.”
Given that there will be at least three options to choose from, the CCBC discussed structuring the December 2 voting procedure similar to that used in June 2018 when residents selected the preferred option for the school project. At that Town Meeting, officials used voting machines to narrow five options down to three. A second vote then resulted in the winning option gaining 74% of the vote, comfortably over the required 67% supermajority.
Architects will present the next set of options on November 1 to the CCBC, which has another public forum scheduled for November 14.