Abbot meeting to weigh post office location

ABBOT – Residents will decide tonight whether to spend up to $100,000 to renovate a portion of the former elementary school and lease it to the U.S. Postal Service for a post office. The special town meeting is at 7 p.m. at the town hall.

The postal service has offered to lease the newest part of the former school if the town will make the needed renovations.

Selectman Jan Ronco said Tuesday that the renovations would include the addition of a loading dock to the end of the building, probably a new furnace, counter space and the construction of a lobby and work area. Ronco said the town could use funds from a certificate of deposit for the renovation work.

In exchange, the postal service would lease the space for $14,000 a year.

Selectmen like the idea, but want residents to speak their mind. “Generally, we’re supportive, but we want to be sensitive to the town’s feelings about the building,” Ronco said.

Except for some use by the local snowmobile club last winter, the former school has been vacant since Head Start moved out in fall 2002.

The postal service wants a 20-year lease with three five-year options, according to Chris Madden, a U.S. Postal Service official. Madden said Tuesday that once a lease is signed on the new facility, the postal service’s 20-year lease on land adjacent to the municipal building will end.

Since 2000, the postal service has been paying the town $2,500 a year on the small plot of land where it had planned to place a modular building for a new post office. Because of a capital-spending freeze initiated by the postal service, the plot was never used.

Currently, the post office is located in a small building owned by Trafton’s Family Affair on Route 15. Postal service officials want to move it elsewhere for safety reasons.