Jaffrey is seeking permission from Superior Court to hold a special Town Meeting regarding purchasing the current TD Bank on Main Street to turn it into new town office space.

The bank, located at 28 Main St., a short distance from the town’s current town office building, is set to close permanently on Sept. 20, and the building is for sale for an asking price of $1.5 million.

Jaffrey Town Manager Jon Frederick said the town has been in negotiations with the bank to purchase the building, and has an accepted offer, but declined to comment on the price while the purchase was still in negotiations.

“We’re very excited about this. The town has been waiting for an opportunity like this for a long time,” Frederick said.

The town has been seeking a new space for town offices for years. When the town moved into the current town office building, it was meant to be a temporary measure, Frederick said.

“This building was only intended to be in use for five years,” Frederick said. “That was in 1995.”

The town has conducted studies looking for alternative spaces for the town offices, and Frederick said one of the outcomes of that process was a recommendation that the town offices still be centrally located. The town looked at building an addition to the current Police Department, but Frederick said that would have been a much more expensive option – over $5 million, estimated –  than purchasing the bank, which is also located in the same area.

“The primary reason is the poor setup of our current facility,” Frederick said of the issues with the current town offices. “We’ve been looking at this space for long before I got here.”

Frederick said the town currently has an undesignated fund balance for the year of $3.34 million. The town is petitioning the court to allow use of those undesignated funds to purchase the bank, stating that the town does not want to lose the potential opportunity by waiting until regular Town Meeting in March.

Frederick said that even at the $1.5 million asking price, the town would have enough undesignated funds to purchase the building and leave the state’s recommended percentage held back in case of catastrophic emergencies.

In anticipation of eventually needing new town offices, the town has also been contributing to a town office capital reserve fund, which currently sits at $313,000. Frederick said rather than putting that fund toward the purchase of the building, it would likely be used for retrofitting the bank to the town office’s needs.

“The way that it’s set up would allow for us to move in with very little work necessary,” Frederick said. “It's much larger and would allow us to have a much more useful office space, with more meeting space.”

Frederick said the town has yet to make any decisions about what would happen to the current town office if the offices move into the bank, but said one option is to retain the building for other municipal purposes, as part of an overall municipal complex, since it is right next to the bank and the Police Department.

“There’s interest in that, but overall, we’re not in a hurry to get rid of this [building], and our situation allows for a leisurely and better transition, that can happen without losing services for our residents,” Frederick said.

The Select Board agreed during its meeting on Tuesday to approve Frederick to petition the Superior Court for a special Town Meeting. The town posted the notice that it will be petitioning the court for the meeting on Wednesday. By law, the notice must be posted a minimum of 10 days prior to filing the petition with the court. Frederick said he will move forward with the petition as soon as the notice period is up.

The earliest the town might see a special Town Meeting is mid-December, taking into account the court process and meeting noticing requirements, Frederick said.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.