Angier Scraps Plans For New Town Hall

Behind-the-scenes deal goes public and ruins option B

By Emily Weaver
Dunn Daily Record

Angier Town Hall will have to stay put — for now -— after a behind-the-scenes deal came to light.

Although the expanded town force will have to continue “stepping over each other” in its cramped quarters spread out among different buildings, the taxpayers are getting a break this year.

Angier officials originally planned to construct a new town hall in place of its current one that was built in 1955. The two-story, 21,400-square-foot, updated center was estimated to cost $10 million before inflation, supply issues and a labor shortage stoked fears of a rising price tag.

Commissioner George “Junior” Price turned to another option at a downtown building owned by Sen. Jim Burgin.

The building, constructed in 1920 at 53 S. Broad St. E., comes with 10,000-square-feet of space, two elevators (one of which is considered the oldest in the state) and a current tax value of $562,076 after the county’s recent revaluation.

Price offered Burgin $3.5 million for it.

“What happened was I had a conversation with the chief of police and he is the one that told me … ‘If you go over there and offer Jim Burgin $3.5 million, I’m pretty sure he would sell it,’” Price said. “I figured they had discussed it around town hall if the chief was telling me that.”

Price said he worried about the cost of a new building rising over $18 million and went to Burgin with an offer in hopes of saving taxpayer dollars.

He didn’t call Town Manager Gerry Vincent, first, he said, because “we were a little upset with him” after Vincent “told us if the price (to construct a new town hall) went up quite a bit, he was going to put a stop to it himself.”

If he did sell it, Burgin advised Price everything would have to be above board.

“I said, ‘Don’t get me into something. I said, ‘If you have any discussions with anybody (about this) you need to have them in closed session and then, if it’s something y’all want to pursue, there is a process. But it has to be completely open and above reproach, especially with me being an elected official,’” Burgin said.

“It would be easier for me to say, ‘no.’”

A gaveled motion

At the start of Tuesday’s board meeting, Price asked the board to add a town hall discussion in closed session to the agenda.

“I believe that we’re in the process of changing the plan to build the new town hall. I believe that instead we are going to discuss buying Jim Burgin’s building for $3.5 million for town officials,” Mayor Bob Smith said after Price’s request. “I believe that we will have to renovate the old town hall for the police. … I believe that we are in a position to throw away some $700,000 that we have paid towards the construction of a new town hall …”

Price motioned to approve the agenda and closed session “without your (the mayor’s) comments.”

“That’s out of order,” Smith said, striking the gavel. “Is there another motion?”

The agenda and closed session were approved after a motion from Commissioner Loru Boyer Hawley.

“I don’t think that we would be throwing away $700,000 if we can save the taxpayers almost right now, over $18 million for a town hall and, right now, I’m sorry but I don’t think we ought to put it on the taxpayers’ back,” Hawley said before her motion. “I think we need to maybe take a couple of years because we are in a recession or getting ready to get into a recession and I think as being the servants of this town, it is our fiscal responsibility to make sure that the burden does not lie on the taxpayers.”

The more than $700,000 the town spent, Hawley said, went towards designs Angier now owns and can use in the future for a new town hall after the volatile market calms down.

Building a town hall

The town planned to demolish its current building to construct a new one at the same downtown location and spent more than $700,000 to complete 90% of the new town hall’s designs.

Vincent said they were set to learn the “guaranteed maximum price” of the town hall’s construction on Friday — three days after Tuesday’s meeting. No deadlines pressured an early vote, but design costs would have continued to mount in the days that followed.

“I think there was a lot of speculation that the numbers (for the project) were coming in at $20 million and between $20 and $24 million but that was not the case,” Vincent said. “It was not going to come in between $20 and $24 million.”

The final max cost, with “soft costs” factored in, came in at $14.9 million on Friday, Vincent said. And that price could have been reduced with other cutbacks, he added.

Vincent said the first time he was made aware of the option to buy Burgin’s building was the night of the meeting Tuesday.

When asked why weren’t the options of other existing buildings considered before planning to build a new town hall, Vincent said they were.

“We’ve looked at the inventory of Angier to try to identify an existing building” downtown that would house the offices of finance, administration, utilities, planning and the police department, he said. But a large enough building — cheaper than buying a new one — was nowhere to be found downtown.

Burgin put a lot of work into his building, but even it was half the size of the one they needed and would have required a new location for at least the police and utilities departments.

Town commissioners agreed to “indefinitely” table plans to build a bigger space in hopes of buying Burgin’s. But the idea of town officials buying a senator’s building for $3.5 million after the town was awarded $10.4 million in state funds for water and sewer projects, left some people accusing the town of a kickback in the making.

“Absolutely not,” Vincent said. “That’s not what we’re doing. That’s not the direction we’re going … We have a general fund and a utility fund that can’t cross over.”

The phones of commissioners, Burgin and Vincent have been ringing ever since.

“The whole way it was handled was wrong,” Burgin said. “I don’t see any way to sell it to them (now) … Angier is going to have to adopt a policy of wait.”

A larger town hall is needed to accommodate growing staff for a demand on services in a town exploding in residential growth.

“We’re kind of stepping over each other now,” Vincent said of the town’s current office quarters. 

He was told of another property with the square footage Angier is looking for in a new town hall, but it isn’t downtown.

Vote after closed session

Former Commissioner Mike Hill encouraged the commissioners to talk about the town hall plans, which involve taxpayer money, in open session rather than in closed session.

“It ain’t right,” Hill said. “You need to meet in here in front of the public and have the decision made in this room and not at somebody else’s house.”

The two-hour meeting still ended in a closed session.

When the board returned, commissioners “unanimously voted to table the new Town Hall design & construction until a later date and pursue an option to purchase another office building,” Town Clerk Veronica Hardaway said in an email. “(C)leaning and renovations will be made to the existing Town Hall that will house the Finance and Police Departments; the Planning Department will move to 58 N. Broad St. E. contingent upon termination of lease. The real estate tax rate will be reduced to $0.49 based on Harnett County’s re-appraisal.”

Hawley motioned to approve the action and board members voted 4-0 to accept the motion without the need of Smith to vote.

“The board was unanimous in approving everything (for the new town hall) until a week and a half ago,” Smith said. “It was not questioned until the last week and a half.”

With no new building on the immediate horizon and an offer to buy a downtown building now off the table, town leaders have no choice but to wait out a volatile market.

“I cannot put this undue burden on the taxpayers,” Hawley said. “We decided to halt it for another two to three years. … We’re trying to be fiscally conservative with the taxpayers’ money.”