It's costly, but it's time: Gilford will ask voters to fund new DPW building

GILFORD — The Department of Public Works doesn’t get the attention police, fire or schools do. Instead, they stay in the periphery, doing the dirty work necessary to keep everything flowing smoothly through town.

It’s now time to put public works at the center of the town’s attention, according to a committee that's been studying the department. Further, the committee suggests, it’s time for the town to invest in the department by giving it a new building

The town will be asking voters at Town Meeting to authorize issuing a bond for a new DPW building. Expecting the price tag will be shocking to some, a couple of open houses have been scheduled in December so voters can get a sense of what they’re being asked to replace.

Richard Grenier, chair of the DPW Building Needs Committee, said most people think of the 90 miles of roads in town when they think of public works. While the construction, maintenance and clearing of those roads is certainly part of what DPW does, there’s a lot more most people don’t realize.

“It’s the best kept secret in town,” Grenier said. “It does its work quietly and you don’t hear about it.

In addition to plowing roads and digging ditches, the DPW is asked to maintain all of the town’s vehicles, from police cruisers to backhoes to fire trucks, issue permits, take care of landscaping on town property, administer bridge work and serve as the town’s in-house engineering office. Gilford DPW also maintains the town’s sewer system and many cemeteries in town.

The staff of 26 full-time DPW employees has been providing that range of services to the town in a facility the committee has determined is well due for replacement.

In addition to Grenier, the committee includes Jack Kelley, Doug Lambert and Scott Davis, Dale Channing Eddy as the selectboard representative, and DPW Director Meghan Theriault.

“The existing building has served its purpose. Its useful life has been exhausted. Because of its condition and various code issues, we hired a company to look at if it could be rehabbed, and it was determined that we could not rehab that building,” said Scott Dunn, town administrator.

The building’s roof has caved in from snow three times, and the water table fills in the pits in the service bay meant for lifts. Moisture makes mold a recurring problem, and the HVAC system is only marginally operable at best.

Even if those issues could be addressed, there’s still the issue of size. The current building, which is about 50 years old, provides about 13,000 square feet of space. There’s not a private meeting space or a comfortable place for plow truck drivers to take a rest during long storms. As a result of these deficiencies, the committee concluded the best use of taxpayer dollars would be on a new structure, one with 22,000 square feet, built in the same location as the current one.

“The committee that we have is all citizens, they’re all fairly conservative, they’re not big spenders in any sense of the word,” Dunn said. “They are the ones who have determined that this is the way to go.”

It won’t be cheap, though. Construction costs have risen significantly in recent years, and that trend will be in effect for this project. The rough estimate is somewhere around $12 million — a more exact figure will be provided to the town on Wednesday, Dec. 18.

Bonding the project at current rates would likely cost the town $700,000 per year for 30 years, which would add about $0.20 to the property tax rate, Dunn said.

Grenier said he expects people to be taken aback by the price, but added forestalling the project won’t save the town money in the long run.

“We want the bond on the 2025 [Town] Warrant, we don’t want to push this thing off,” Grenier said. If another year passes, “who knows what the market’s going to be like then?”

To help provide voters with as much information as possible, the town is hosting two open houses in the current building. The first will be at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 5, and the second at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14.

Theriault said she hopes people attend the open houses, and that they bring their questions and concerns. She also hopes they get a good look at where the DPW has been performing its work.

“The current building was built back in the '70s,” Theriault said. “The building suffers from a lot of different problems.”

Its problems are more than inconvenient or uncomfortable — it’s unsafe at times, she said. The moist atmosphere makes for slick floors in the service area, there isn’t adequate storage for chemicals and she is concerned about the quality of air her staff are breathing.

“The ventilation system in the garage, no one knows when that last worked,” Theriault said. They use a fan to try to move air around, but there’s no avoiding exposure to vehicle exhaust and other fumes created by the servicing of town equipment.

“Do we make it work? Of course we do, we have to,” Theriault said. “But it is not efficient to be functioning in a space that doesn’t have the things you need.”

She agreed with the committee’s decision that the time had come for the town to construct a DPW building for the next 50 years.

“We have all come to the conclusion that this is the time to do this, it makes sense,” Theriault said. “Hopefully the residents will see that we’ve done the work to show why.”

If voters agree, the project could be completed by the end of 2026.