Chuck McGee: With The HUB defeated, consider Crucon building for community center

To The Daily Sun,

For the fourth and hopefully last time, voters at Thursday night’s Moultonborough town meeting soundly rejected the latest $15.9 million community center proposal known as The HUB. Thank you. While I believe most agree Moultonborough needs something better than the former Lions Club, spending $16 million or more was not the answer. Rehabbing the Lions Club would be the most cost-effective solution, but has received no support from voters. Purchasing the currently-available Crucon building is an option worth exploring. A bargain at $200 square feet, it would allow for creation of a municipal complex containing town offices, a community center and the Meals On Wheels program for about a third the cost of The HUB. I constantly hear people say the selectboard should do “something,” as if there’s some magic solution no one has thought of. Crucon could be the answer. Doing nothing will result in The HUB 2.0, for even more money, somewhere down the line. This latest effort by FOTMCC cost Moultonborough taxpayers $26,000. How many more times do we want to do that? Interestingly, Claremont recently announced an increase in their community center family membership fee from $350 to $500 annually. This is on top of the $500K in annual operating costs to their taxpayers. There is no free lunch, folks. Building a new facility from the ground up will never be cost-effective for a town the size of Moultonborough, and it will never pay for itself in terms of operating costs. If we truly want to move forward, the town should buy the Crucon building.

Chuck McGee

Moultonborough