FAYETTE — Residents at the annual town meeting Thursday narrowly voted to spend up to $15,000 in town money to help pay for an engineering study of Starling Hall, which needs major renovations to make the building fully accessible to the public. Starling Hall on Route 17 in North Fayette is considered the oldest building in Maine to have been built as a Grange Hall. As the group Friends of Starling Hall continues to raise money for ongoing, substantial repairs to the town-owned building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, some residents say they do not want town funds spent on a building they believe has limited potential for expanded public use.
By a nine-vote margin, a majority of the 147 voters at the town meeting agreed to spend the money from the town’s surplus account to match private funding for an architectural and engineering study that officials said will define what is needed to bring the historic building up to current building codes for a public building. Michael Carlson, a selectman and member and treasurer of Friends of Starling Hall, a nonprofit fundraising group, said the study will help establish what needs to be done to return the building’s three levels to full public use. Currently, only the middle floor — where voting was just held in town elections and the statewide primary — meets the requirements that public spaces be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
Carlson said most of the $300,000 that has bee.