LISBON — Town councilors directed Town Manager Glenn Michalowski to negotiate a one-year lease with Lisbon Area Christian Outreach Food Pantry for space at the MTM Community Center during Tuesday’s meeting. The lease would allow the pantry to stay longer, though councilors emphasized the need for the panty to find a new location.

Since 2005, the pantry has been an at-will tenant paying minimal or no rent for its space.

Earlier this year, town officials asked the food pantry to find a new space because the town’s after-school recreation program has expanded and requires more space at the MTM Community Center for safety reasons. Food pantry members took to social media to share their concerns.

After much concern and frustration from the food pantry community, councilors decided to help find an alternative space, assuring them they would not be left without options.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Councilor Raymond Robishaw expressed worry that the pantry was not actively seeking a new location. He wants to see the pantry help itself instead of relying so heavily on the town, he said. However, Michalowski assured councilors that the pantry was making a good-faith effort to find a new space.

Councilors discussed potential spaces in town that the pantry could rent, but Councilor Mark Lunt noted the pantry’s nearly nonexistent budget would not cover normal rent prices at some of the spaces mentioned at the meeting.

“This is not pie-in-the-sky charity we’re talking about,” Lunt said. “If you take that away you’re really going to hurt a lot of the people that need it the most. So, I have a lot of concerns about how we’re handling this as if it was some kind of a business operating here.”

He also expressed frustration that the after-school program’s relocation from a town school to the MTM Community Center was displacing the pantry.

Parks and Recreation Director Mark Stevens said consolidating the panty into one room at the MTM Community Center would better secure the after-school program.

Program attendance is not expected to shrink, rather it is expected to grow as the student population grows in Lisbon resulting from expanded housing opportunities, he said.

Councilors explored the possibility of relocating items stored at the MTM Community Center to other town-owned buildings but found it impractical, as it could overcrowd other rooms.

Chairman Harry Moore Jr. said during a recent meeting with pantry officials, there was disagreement on whether the pantry could operate out of a single room. He left the meeting feeling like food pantry members need to come to an agreement internally before they can negotiate with the town.

“Well that puts us at a stalemate,” he said. “I mean we can’t negotiate if you’re not even ready to tell us what you’re willing or not willing to do. So I don’t know where we’re at after that.”

Ultimately, no formal vote was taken at the meeting, instead councilors directed Michalowski to negotiate a one-year lease that would give the pantry one room to operate out of instead of the two it is currently occupying.