JAY – Town Manager Ruth Marden walked through the new municipal building Tuesday explaining where police and town staff offices will be located as well as where selectmen will meet.

The combination town office/police station is well on its way to being ready for occupation this spring.

On the outside of the former Jay Family Restaurant building, slate blue vinyl siding is going up with four rows of pewter siding running above the windows around the building to add some contrast.

The building’s corners are pewter, as well.

“We wanted to keep tones compatible with the bank and shopping plaza,” Marden said. Both are located across the street.

No colors have been picked for interior walls and flooring, but they’ll be looking at samples soon.

New windows with white grill-insets give the outside and the inside of the building a brighter look.

There will be two front entrances to the building, one on the left (looking at the building) for the police station and the other on the right for the town office.

When entering the town office section, the counter will be straight ahead with a waiting area to the right that will have public information documents, including tax maps for people to browse, Marden said.

The selectmen’s meeting room, which also will be a multipurpose room for meetings and training, will be on the left before the counter area.

Offices of the tax assessor, town clerk and town manager are to the right, and there will be glass panels in the offices with vertical blinds.

Marden already knows where her desk will be located and she’ll have one wall of shelves to keep her law books, documents and other materials.

The new building, though it is similar in space to the existing two-story town office, doubles the usable space and puts it all on one floor, Marden said.

The downstairs of the current building is off limits to people working for a long periods of time, due to air quality issues, but it is used for storage.

There is also a fire-proof safe room to keep birth certificates and other important documents.

“It’s the first time all of the records will be in one spot, which is pretty exciting,” Marden said. Some records, now kept at the Community Building, will be moved back to the new town office.

There is also a master storage room for supplies that will be wired for computers in case another office is needed in the future.

The finance office is large enough to have a partial petition with two work stations and a large financial records closet.

“As you can see we have focused an awful lot on storage,” Marden said.

The code enforcement office has enough space for code books and industrial permit records, now housed downstairs at the town office.

On the police station side, there are offices for police chief and a shared room for detective and sergeant, a break room/small training room, interview room, and reception area among other rooms.

“The good thing about this is we took some time developing a plan … and in the end we came up with a plan that is going to be versatile,” Marden said. “The process has really worked.”

Building Committee input and public participation “has really given us a quality product in the end,” Marden said.