New Center for Peacham?

Should the town of Peacham spend a large chuck of budget money to build a new Community Center? Not according to most residents of the town. After a heated discussion, it was determined, by just 3 votes, that a new community center would not be built, saving the town $20,000 .

Peacham resident Fred Fortin, who was happy with the end result, said, “This is the wrong time to spend $20,000 on a supposition”.

“Something that is that significant an investment as either a new town hall or a new community center or a combination of the two takes some planning and some thinking and we feel that even though we've had some representation from these groups that it is time to bring a discussion to everybody in the community into the discussion” said Barry Lawson, a resident who wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea.

When discussion came about that the current town hall was not adequate, resident Fred Fortin claimed that it was safe and could be enlarged to support a larger occupancy. Tim McKay, a Peacham selectboard member, said “Our town hall has a gym on the 2nd floor, it’s an old building. We used to have town meeting there but the fire marshal stopped us from having town meeting there because of egress problems in the building”.

$40,000, however, was approved for the capitol-building fund to upgrade the town hall and septic and heating systems for weatherization of the building.