The petition to restore the Park Street building to usability is seriously under funded. It allows us to stir up the “CAKE” mix but allows nothing for the heat to cook it or frosting to cover it. Understand the petition wording calls for specific improvements and asks for $1,400,000 to pay for them. Nothing more and nothing less. The note on the petition explaining where these funds would be spent calls for updating the HVAC system, bring the building into compliance with the building code and includes the instillation of a fire suppression system and add an elevator.

I have to ask where the funds will come from to remove the trash left behind from the SAD evacuation and the cost of disposing of it properly. Nothing is included for mold or asbestos abatement. Where are the funds to repair or replace the roof? What happens to all the molding carpeting, what is it replaced with and where are those funds? There is no mention of even one gallon of paint for the walls.

When an article of this nature is written and calls for specific funds and specific outlays that is all that can be done, any remaining funds return to the general fund. The town cannot just go ahead and spend the rest on any old thing it wants on the project. The petitioners call this a bare bones approach. I call it a bare backside approach. The taxpayer will be left standing on the sidewalk in front of this money pit with his pants around his ankles wondering why his money was wasted on a dying edifice of limited sentimental value that still needs another million or more poured into it.

The mere mention of renting this to non-profits is a fool hearted invitation to every methadone clinic, homeless shelter or half way house within ear shot. You cannot let one in and not the other. And just where does the idea come from that the majority of the taxpayers in our town want to subsidize the rent of non-profits because unless they pay fair market value that is just what we are doing. Why would we want to rent any thing to any one when we have vacant store fronts up and down Main Street? How is the administration going to be funded to pay for this renting oversight? Are we really to believe that the building will pay for it self when not one shred of relevant proof has been offered up?

This petition is clearly a phased project that the petitioners have neglected neither to admit to nor to make reference to. More tax dollars will be spent on this building in the very near future, possibly millions. So we are being asked to approve this petition to use a building that the town manager states he has no use for, your selectmen have no use for. The claims of needed space were a myth when they were first made and they are a fabrication of an over active imagination now. Town offices will not be moved into that building.

Here we are in the midst of the worst economic storm the majority of us have ever seen with a federal government on the verge of initiating the most massive make work project the world has ever seen that will drive us further and further in debt and some would have us waste tax dollars on a mold invested tired old dinosaur while we struggle to find the funding for the air packs our firemen wear to be able to breath when the race into a burning building.

We need you to attend the Special Town Meeting we are being forced by petition to hold and cast your vote on this article. It is of the utmost importance to the stability of our municipal budget going forward that we defeat this initiative. 

We do not have funds we can waste on this feel good endeavor to placate those who would liberally expend our precious tax dollars. We can not waste the $60,000 or more dollars we would have to expend to reimburse Avesta Housing; we need these funds for more important capital purchases.

Saturday, Jan. 31, 9 a.m., at the high school gymnasium, please be there. Please be there and join with the fiscally responsible among us and defeat this petition article. I am voting “No,” how about you?

Al Searles

Kennebunk Selectman