HIGHLAND, NY — The Town of Highland has received a $75,000 grant from retiring NY-100 Assembly Member, Aileen Gunther, in addition to a local families donation of a new message board for the …
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HIGHLAND, NY — The Town of Highland has received a $75,000 grant from retiring NY-100 Assembly Member, Aileen Gunther, in addition to a local families donation of a new message board for the town worth approximately $4,000.
This is the third grant the town has received from Gunther’s office in recent months. The town was already awarded $250,000 to restore the Barryville courthouse and $50,000 to be used to upgrade the community kitchen for commercial use.
Announcing the grant award at the December town board meeting, supervisor John Pizzolato said the money will be used “for tech upgrades and a cosmetic redux of the town hall, including the kitchen.”
“We’re very excited and very grateful to Aileen Gunther, and I’m excited for our community at large that she’s been so dedicated for all these years to our town and bringing money back home,” said Pizzolato.
The town board voted to accept a new town announcement board, gifted by the Tigar family. The four by eight by two foot announcement board will have lockable sides for official town announcements or advertisements and an operable side for pin-ups from the community as well as an illuminated header panel for the town name or new town seal that is currently being designed.
The town clerk said a bulletin board like this would normally cost the town $4,000.
What makes a building historic?
In other business, the town board has stalled in choosing an architect for the courthouse renovation, a project funded by a $250,000 grant from representative Aileen Gunther’s office, due to questions about required expertise for the project’s forecaster and the official historical status of the court house.
The town revealed the two bids, Preston Drafting services and Shadow Architects, who responded to a November request for proposal for a court house renovation architect.
Councilperson Kaitlyn Haas pointed out that Preston Drafting services does not have an architectural license and any plans drafted might need to be stamped, raising the cost quoted in Preston Drafting’s bid.
Pizzolato moved to table the decision until the board could determine if a draftsman was sufficient or a licensed architect was required.
Town resident and former board member Andrew Valenti said, “I was rather surprised to find out it is not, at that time, a historic building. I don’t know if anything has changed in the interim, but if it has not changed, we may refer to it as a historic building in general speak, but unless someone applied and registered it, currently, it is not a registered historic building.”
“And the reason I say this, is if you’re going to do work to the building, you would not be restricted by state regulations, because it’s not a registered building. You may want to try to keep it as much as you can to the same look, but that would be voluntary,” he said.
“I appreciate that input, because we do have to decipher what’s going on with the architect and what’s going to be the most cost effective and what’s going to have the greatest long standing benefit to the community,” Pizzolato responded.
The confusion about the historical status comes from a plaque on the building. In the ‘70s or ‘80s there was a historical society that appointed several buildings with historical reference without any real authority, Pizzolato said.
“So the plaque that’s in the foyer there, claiming that it’s a historic building, should be taken with a grain of salt,” Valenti said.
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