ORANGE — The year 2017 will be a chess game of sorts for Wheeler Memorial Library.
The institution is unlikely to begin any renovations on its 102-year-old building, but staff members hope to spend time strategically getting all the pieces in place to meet that goal.
Orange residents voted on Dec. 10 to permit the town to apply for a state grant to fund the expansion of the library at 49 East Main St.
Library Director Jessica Magelaner said securing the grant would mean Orange would be reimbursed 40 to 50 percent of the project’s cost, a figure she said is “impossible to say at this point.” It would be the library’s first significant renovation since it opened in 1914.
“It was a difficult meeting, but we got a lot of really good support from the community, and that’s a really important thing at this stage,” she said.
Finance Committee member Robert Stack served as a dissenting voice, expressing concern that the library would take priority over other necessary town projects that would fall by the wayside.
“We’re not going to be able to afford a school. We’re not going to be able to afford a sewer complex,” he said.
Magelaner said the application is extensive and she is receiving help from staff members and people at Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. She said the deadline is Jan. 24.
The operations project manager is Daniel Pallotta.
“They had a lot of experience with libraries our size. Dan is involved in local politics in his own town (Hanover) and he’s familiar with how small town politics works and they’ve gotten funding for a lot of projects in low-income towns like ours,” Magelaner said.
Magelaner said fundraising would begin when the application is submitted. After that, the next step would be to hold additional public meetings to get more community input.
Candy Cross, a former Wheeler Memorial librarian who sits on the library building committee, said all meetings are public and she encourages people attend. She and Magelaner said those meetings could be held as early as Jan. 27 or 28.
“This is their library,” Cross said when she stopped by Magelaner’s office. “I’m a former children’s librarian, and I always asked the kids, ‘Whose library is this?’ And they would point to me and say, ‘Yours,’ and I would say, ‘No, it’s yours, because the library belongs to the people of the town.’”
As the design stands, the renovation would include a new roof and expansion of the building into the back parking lot. What are currently the building’s front and side entrances would become emergency-only exits and a new entrance would be built in the rear of the building. Magelaner said this new entrance would open to a lobby and a community room accommodating 75 to 100 people, depending on furnishings.
The expansion would include a circulation workroom, two bathrooms, fiction and nonfiction book stacks, a room for young adults and a book drop that can accommodate even fragile items and secure them inside the building.
Magelaner said she is most excited about the community room and the children’s room. She said the community room could be used for various meetings after library hours, with a key that can be properly checked out.
“A big thing that libraries are these days is just a neutral meeting space,” she said. “The library really needs to be the heart of the community. It’s an open space where anyone can feel welcome.”
The second-floor children’s room will give young people a space to themselves, she said.
But the designs come with proposed improvements for most of the building.
“We definitely need more space for our collection,” Magelaner said. “I would love to see this library have a small second-language collection, little bit of Spanish, a little bit of French, a little bit of German. Not anything extensive, but we don’t have any room for that right now.
“If you go out and look at our books … we’re getting creative with putting DVDs on top of the shelves and making little displays wherever we can to try and get the new books off the shelves so that we have more space,” she added.
Cross said she foresees “a year of really hard work” in 2017.
Magelaner said there will likely be two more grant-related votes this year — one to see if the town will vote to accept the schematic design, the second one for official authorization to apply for the grant. She explained the Dec. 10 was merely a blessing to apply for the grant.
A lifelong resident is circulating a petition to bring the option of 911 emergency dispatch regionalization to a town vote.
Holly Young said she is asking for registered voters’ signatures because she is unhappy with how the town government has handled the issue, saying the Athol Board of Selectmen kept the public in the dark when it entered into an agreement in March 2015 to regionalize its dispatch services. The proposal is to consolidate Athol police and fire dispatch with that of Gardner and operate in a regional emergency communication center in the new Gardner police station.
“Information was never out there for the town. It was kind of done behind the scenes,” she said, adding that she learned of the issue a few months ago.
Athol Town Manager Shaun A. Suhoski has regularly defended the measures the town has taken as transparent.
Young said she needs signatures from at least 200 of Athol’s registered voters. She said last week she was approaching that figure.