Temple residents had an opportunity to weigh in on recommended changes to town lands, including talks about relocating the highway department, at a public forum Thursday night, some of which are featured on the 2021 warrant.
The recommendations came from the Temple Land Use Committee, which was formed at the 2020 Town Meeting to examine town properties and recommend changes to their management. The committee released a list of recommendations in December.
Twenty-one people attended the public forum, and the committee is scheduling another discussion session for May, prior to Town Meeting on June 12.
Moving the Highway Department from its current location in the center of town garnered most of the night’s attention. The current Highway Department occupies an acre behind the Town Hall and the library. Fringed by private property and conservation land, there’s no place to expand on site, Land Use Committee chair Tim Fiske said, and safety hazards and parking issues are piling up – not to mention a 45 year-old septic system that will need relocation before too long.
Moving the Highway Department could allow for more parking downtown, without the current risk of town vehicles getting blocked in or hitting parked cars, he said, and a two acre site would allow the Highway Department to keep more of their materials in the same space, rather than spread all over town. The current Highway Department building, once vacated, could be used for municipal offices, or to house a museum for the Historical Society, Fiske said, or the space could be used for library and Town Hall needs. The current discussion is a move to be proactive about the issue rather than waiting until the situation is more dire, committee Vice Chair Christine Robidoux said.
A two-and-a-half-acre town-owned parcel known as the Holt property, which sits across Route 45 from the Fire Station is the best location for a new Highway Department of three the Land Use Committee investigated, Fiske said. The town acquired the Holt property in 2015 due to unpaid taxes, Fiske said. It abuts the 64-acre Skladany property, town land that is less suitable for building, but good for vehicle or material storage if further expansion was ever needed, he said.
Article 9 on this year’s warrant is the first step of moving the Highway Department to the Holt and Skladany properties. It asks voters to spend $45,000 on engineering, survey, and architectural work to estimate costs, financing, timing, and aesthetics of the undertaking. Fiske estimated it would ultimately cost between $500,000 and $800,000 to build out the space to what they needed, he said, and they could save by providing a lot of the labor themselves. Nearby Mason recently spent $330,000 on a similar project, he said.
Article 12 on the 2021 warrant asks voters to place a conservation easement on 16.44 acres of town-owned land at the junction of Route 45 and Hadley Highway, including historical Schoolhouse 6. The move would “once and for all make sure it is protected in perpetuity as an open space right in the center of town,” Conservation Commission Chair Scott Hecker said. Most of the impacted land is a steep, grassy field with wetland patches, he said. The Historical Society has never proposed expanding the schoolhouse itself, Historical Society President Honey Hastings said, so the article would not affect their efforts to create a museum in town. There is additional un-conserved town land on the parcel that could still be used, she said. Committee member George Willard cast the lone vote against the recommendation because he thought the area was conserved enough as-is without formalizing it, Robidoux said. Willard was unable to attend Thursday’s forum.
Temple has acquired four properties at the corner of Old Peterborough Road and Route 45 over the years due to unpaid taxes, Fiske said, and the Land Use Committee recommends the town sell them off to get them back on the tax rolls. “We’ve lost probably close to $150,000 in taxes over the years,” he said of the two southernmost parcels, which the town has held for about 25 years.
Article 11 on this year’s warrant would allocate $7,000 to perform two lot line adjustments to create and sell two single house lots, retaining a smaller section of land as a conservation easement and trailhead.
The southernmost, smallest parcel connects conservation land to the south to Route 45, Fiske said, and the committee thought it would be better for the town to keep a 50-foot swath of that parcel as a right-of-way so there was no question over whether people had a right to cross it. Hikers would still need to walk a couple hundred feet up Route 45 to access conservation land to the east, Fiske said.
Each of the properties are about four acres in size, and the committee recommends combining the two northern lots to sell as an eight-acre single house lot, and the two southern lots to a seven-acre lot, the larger sizes making them more appealing and saleable. Adjacent landowners to one of the tracts have expressed interest in buying it, Fiske said.
Not included in the warrant are recommendations that the town give an unusable half acre of property along the highway to the state, absorb a 1.35 acre “orphan lot” to the adjacent parcel housing the Fire Department as both parcels are too small to do anything with on their own, and retain the 18.45 acre parcel next to Temple Elementary School for future town uses, such as solar panels or affordable housing.
Resident Nicole Concordia expressed disappointment that the committee hadn’t made more effort to consult the townspeople before they delivered their recommendations to the Select Board. “It just felt really fast,” she said, and that the only opportunity resident input at this point would be to alter the warrant during Town Meeting. The committee agreed to schedule a second public forum in May.
Temple residents are also being asked to vote on changes to the town’s zoning ordinance on March 9. The changes affect accessory dwelling unit regulations and planned residential developments.