TURNER – Town Clerk Eva Leavitt confirmed Thursday that signatures for a warrant article petition have been verified, which means an article concerning Leavitt Institute will be on the warrant for the April 3 town meeting.

The inclusion of this article, submitted and supported by former members of the Leavitt Institute Committee, could bring into question a lease agreement reached between the Board of Selectmen and SAD 52 officials.

The agreement, finalized last spring, allows the school to lease one and a half floors of the Institute building at $3 per square foot for 10 years. The space would be used for SAD 52 administrative offices.

Based on this agreement, the SAD 52 Board of Directors didn’t include money for new administrative offices in a bond issue passed by voters last fall.

Although signed by all parties, the agreement is contingent upon the townspeople giving the Board of Selectmen authority to enter into such an agreement. It has been common practice for officials to sign leases and rent town-owned spaces for years, but their legal right to do so was questioned by Institute Committee members.

Hence, selectmen have included a warrant article, which, if passed, would give them that legal authority for all town-owned properties – including the Institute.

Fair market value

But the article submitted by petition, if approved, would authorize selectmen to lease that same Institute space but would require that the fair-market lease value, per square foot, be determined by a licensed appraiser, not to exceed $9 per foot.

The town had not yet received a legal opinion on how that appraisal, if it differs from the agreed-upon $3, would affect the agreement with SAD 52. If the selectmen’s warrant article is approved as it currently stands, the agreement could go forward as signed.

Leasing of the Institute space has been a contentious issue over the past year and the entire Leavitt Institute Committee resigned over the agreement with SAD 52. Selectman Ralph Caldwell, who was a member of that committee and who submitted the petition for the new warrant article, was the only vote in opposition to the agreement last spring. Remaining town officials have argued throughout discussion of the issue that since the Institute stands in the middle of the school campus with the Elementary School, the Middle School and playgrounds surrounding it, school use of the building is the safest and most logical use.

Move Town Office?

The warrant article submitted this week is quite different from an article Caldwell proposed to the board at the end of January and asked to have added to the warrant. That article would have asked that the Town Office Committee investigate and gather costs to move the Town Office to the Institute.

Having signed the agreement with SAD 52, the selectmen refused and told Caldwell he would have to gather signatures and get the warrant article included by petition. The article submitted this week, however, mentions nothing about the Town Office being moved – only cost appraisals.

The Town Office Committee in a nearly unanimous vote last year, except for Caldwell, rejected the use of the Institute building for Town Office space citing its location in the middle of the school campus.

Two votes, one at a public hearing and one a straw vote at the annual town meeting, confirmed that townspeople did not wish to have the Town Office moved to that location but wanted it to remain where it is and be expanded. A survey by the Comprehensive Planning Committee also showed overwhelming support for the present Town Office site.

Selectmen, at their meeting Tuesday night, voted to put the two articles at the beginning of the warrant for the town meeting, in hopes that more people might attend and take part in the decision.