CONWAY — Both proposed highway facility buildings were approved by voters in the annual Town Meeting on Monday, but not without debate from voters.

The two separate articles, one for a $650,000 unheated storage building — financed by the approximately $1 million in the town’s garage stabilization fund — and the second for a maintenance building is an estimated $1.4 million. The maintenance building will be funded by a combination of garage stabilization funds and borrowing. The estimated amount to be borrowed is $1.28 million.

Voters twice in 2014 rejected the garage proposal. Residents at a special Town Meeting in September didn’t pass an article to pay for its design phase and hire a project manager, with several people saying they felt the Selectboard didn’t have enough answers for them. Selectboard member Philip Kantor last year said the garage received its unflattering ‘vampire” nickname from some residents because  “you can’t kill it, no matter what.”

At the Monday’s meeting, voters also approved an article to purchase of a $200,000 replacement truck for the town’s 1998 Volvo Autocar but passed over two articles which would have allocated $20,000 each for the replacement of a compact loader and a one-ton pickup truck.

Highway Facility Committee Chair Walter Goodridge, spoke to voters about the garage project and why it was coming before the maintenance building. Selectboard member Philip Kantor last year said the highway garage received its unflattering “vampire” nickname from some residents because  “you can’t kill it, no matter what.”

“We have found in a very good and straightforward way, to avoid some of the hassle the previous committee had, which is largely because this is split into projects,” Goodridge said. “We have benefited a lot from the work of the previous committee; we have specifications and drawings. While all of us felt disappointed we spent quite a lot of money to go through this last time, a lot of that has been recouped because it’s saved us a lot of trouble.”

He said the $7,000 fee for the garage and $29,200 for the designer are $100,000 less than the town was quoted several months ago by the lead designer of the 2014 study.

Highway Superintendent Ron Sweet proposed the town road crew do the excavation for the job, which will save the town money, Goodridge said.

“If we pass this article tonight, Ron can get busy with excavation as soon as he’s ready,” Goodridge said. “The last committee has given us a terrific site plan that’s relevant to what we’re going to do in the future. If it were going to be built after the maintenance building, the soonest we could start would be sometime next year. Ron would probably not have enough time to do it. The plan now is to run it through the whole summer and be ready while the designers are also designing the building, let it go out to bid and hopefully break ground late summer early fall.”

Resident Mary McClintock said she believed the town should do the maintenance building first and then build the garage.

“We’ve saved over $1 million to replace our unsafe, inadequate highway garage,” McClintock said. “Spending $650,000 for a building to store highway equipment does not replace our existing highway garage. Instead, it uses $650,000 of our savings and leaves us with a mess of a highway garage and fewer savings to use to replace that garage.”

The two articles for both the garage and the maintenance building were approved by a two-thirds majority. 

Other articles approved by voters included:

The town budget of $6,037,472, an increase of $185,962, or 3.08 percent, from this year’s figures, which are up $264,744, or 4.52 percent, from this year’s. 

The purchase of six new self-contained breathing apparatuses for the Fire Department for $55,710.

The adoption of a resolution in support of “Providing for the creation of a Special Commission to the Seal and Motto of the Commonwealth.”

An increase of $133,813 for the town’s assessment for the Frontier Regional School District from the 2018 to 2019 school year budget of $1,344,781 to the 2019 to 2020 school year budget of $1,478,594.

Reach Melina Bourdeau at mbourdeau@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ext. 263.