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Brookline board pauses Town Hall fire-escape work pending building assessment; discusses voter guide and warrant articles
Summary
Select Board deferred installing a new Town Hall fire escape until building-assessment engineers review the structure, and agreed to consider a neutral voters' guide for warrant articles; asbestos testing results were pending at the meeting.
The Select Board discussed several Town Hall projects at its Dec. 8 meeting, including two contractor estimates for a replacement fire escape (a galvanized option at roughly $74,965 and a carbon-steel option at roughly $57,950), exterior lighting upgrades (~$8,000), and an asbestos test whose lab results were pending.
Some board members described the fire escape as a known safety issue and urged moving ahead in parallel with the building assessment. Others stressed that a horizontal crack on the wall where the fire escape would attach means the engineering team must clear the attachment and structural questions before the board proceeds. The board elected to wait for the building-assessment engineers’ report before approving work on the fire escape.
On election-related business, the board reviewed a petition warrant article asking for a charter commission to enable all-day voting on warrant articles and discussed preparing a neutral voters’ guide to help residents understand warrant articles in advance of ballot or town-meeting votes. Board members debated the workload and format for such a guide and agreed to circulate examples and form a small group to draft concise summaries and background to be completed in January.
Separately, the board approved an amended snow-removal contract with contractor Seal Farwell Construction after concerns about indemnification were addressed. The chair was authorized to sign the amended contract once printed.
The meeting closed with a set of planning-board notices and a motion to enter non-public session under RSA 91-A for personnel, reputation and legal matters.
