Council voted in favour of a multi-million dollar expansion to Tecumseh Town Hall Tuesday night.
The 12,700-sq.ft. building will receive a $3.15-million expansion that will add an additional 7,000 sq.ft. to free up meeting rooms that are currently being used as office and storage space — around half the cost of building a brand new facility, according to a report brought to council.
Here’s look at the proposed expansion plan, @TownofTecumseh Town Hall is currently running at full capacity and meeting rooms are being used as office space by some staff and for storage, according to the report. @AM800News #cklw pic.twitter.com/RCJ7I6NWaF
— Gord Bacon (@baconAM800) February 27, 2019
In 2005, the building's interior was gutted and transformed into the existing floor plan to accommodate staff and meeting spaces for a 10-year period at a cost of $1.5-million. The ten-year lifespan came and went and now the town is using every inch of the building and has some departments using offsite space.
"It's providing a service to our community. When folks come in, whether it's developer or a somebody that wants to invest into the community, where do you put them ... and somebody wants a little bit of privacy for an issue that they're trying to bring forward and so forth," says Mayor Garry McNamara
The issue has been brought by previous councils, and as the report points out, the longer the town delays the inevitable, the more it's going to cost taxpayers.
"If we wait two or three years from now, it's going to be $1-million more and that's the reality we're faced with," says McNamara. "We have to maximize whatever facilities we do have for town purposes."
Ward 2 Councillor Bill Altenhof was the lone vote in opposition — questioning the need to spend millions on town hall rather than, "roads and sidewalks."
Councillor Andrew Dowie acknowledged Altenhof's point, but says in the end, the move will be defensible to his constituents in Ward 1.
"We're probably as small as I think you can be in terms of operating a municipality. By piling people all over each other trying to economize every bit of space, we're not able to do that, we have to have the tools at our disposal to deliver services effectively," added Dowie.
A start date has not been set for the project, but Dowie says money was allocated last year in anticipation of the move.