First there was a referendum to appropriate the money to renovate Town Hall that passed. Then the bids came in higher than was approved. There was talk of a new municipal building at lower Comeau. Then the Elna building came available and the talk was of moving all the town’s services there. There was a plan to refurbish the campus at the upper Comeau with a new building linking to the old and moving all the services up there. Then there was an idea to build a new municipal building at the Mountain View parking lot, which the town owns. Momentum swung back toward the Town Hall renovation with the plans being scaled to meet with the money approved in the 2007 referendum. But with no official scorecard or timeline announced, money was appropriated to get plans to refurbish the Community Center at an early evening, 15 minute meeting. And then that was rescinded after the threat of a permissive referendum, which, in typical Woodstock fashion, was likely to be a donnybrook, taking place just months before a general election for town offices.

And the Town Hall renovation appears back on track. And we’re glad about that. If it continues to fruition, it will help solve one of Woodstock’s major problems.

But the difficulty all along has been that there is no coordinated plan, or timeline for dealing with any of these items. At least not one that has been shared with the public. It’s OK to bring up new ideas and discuss them, in our typically heated fashion. But discussions of different possibilities seem to churn up steam and run full out until they hit the brick wall. And then it’s back to Town Hall. It is better to settle on a direction and lay it out clearly and deliberately, focusing on costs and steps along the way. This has not been done. It didn’t become apparent until this week that the town board was moving back toward its future Town Hall renovation.

The confusion perpetrated by first appropriating $17,000 for Community Center plans, then changing it to $50,000, then rescinding that resolution, led citizens to question the action in the petition fashion available to them. It seemed another bolt out of the blue.

Renovating Town Hall to deal with the space problems of the court, dispatch and police has always stood as the clearest ‘art of the possible’ solution. The referendum in 2007 came after years (decades, maybe) of wondering whether to do it or not. Someone always came up with other ideas, ones that were always a lot less possible. So onward with that.

But let’s not fool ourselves. There are other problems. The workers at the upper Comeau are also toiling in extremely substandard, if somewhat lovely, conditions. The Community Center must be dealt with. These must be dealt with methodically, with an overall plan in mind, informing the public along the way. ++