FORT FAIRFIELD – Plans are in place for an expansion at the local community center to house the town office and police station, as well as for the construction of a new municipal pool. Now local officials need only the funding to get started.

The town is considering borrowing $1 million from the Maine Bond Bank and spending another $250,000 in town reserve funds to pay for the design and construction of the municipal facilities.

Local residents will have a chance to give their input on the matter during a public hearing at the end of the month.

Town Manager Dan Foster said Friday that planning for the two projects has been under way for more than a year and that the funding package under consideration will not cause an increase in the mill rate.

“We’ve been looking at making sure as we look to fund this that it won’t put any undue hardship on the taxpayers of Fort Fairfield,” Foster said.

The projects, he said, will increase the town’s efficiency in providing services and result in several cost savings, as the number of buildings the town has to maintain and heat will go from four to three.

The town’s outdoor, in-ground pool was built half a century ago and has needed to be replaced for more than 20 years.

“It was safety, maintenance, energy use, just a whole host of things,” Foster said. “It had outlived its usefulness. It wasn’t holding water and we were fiberglassing the sides, which were collapsing. We made it work, but we needed a new one.”

What really brought the matter to the forefront, though, was the community involvement.

“A group of citizens came to the council and said, ‘If we can raise $100,000, will the council contribute the rest of the money needed to build a new pool?'” Foster said.

The total project cost was estimated at $375,000, and residents did better than their word, raising $102,000 for the new pool.

The new 22-meter pool – which will be located on Presque Isle Street at the site of the old pool – will be about 49 feet wide by 81 feet long and will include a wading pool.

Groundwork was under way this fall and, if funding is approved, construction will begin this spring, with an anticipated completion by July.

The other project in the works is for the town office and police station, which utilize only 3,000 square feet of space in a 10,000-square-foot, almost century-old building on Main Street. The building has flooded numerous times and has structural issues of its own.

Foster said it used to house the fire department as well, but once the floor started cracking under the trucks, officials knew the department needed to move.

The old armory, which was abandoned by the Maine Army National Guard about four years ago, had been converted into useable space for the recreation department, and now the fire department is located there.

Tony Levesque, the town’s community development director, said last week that Fort Fairfield has completed about $750,000 in major renovations to the armory, now known as the town’s community center.

Levesque also said the town garnered $10,000 in planning grants last fall from the Department of Economic and Community Development to study its options for the town office, including rehabilitating the old facility or building or expanding another structure, such as the community center.

Officials learned that rehabilitating the aging facility would be cost-prohibitive and, at about the same time, they learned that a local developer was interested in buying property on Main Street to establish a new business.

Foster said the town held a public hearing on selling the building and relocating the town office, and then sold the property in October for $100,000 to T&G, LLC, which owns the Irish Setter Pub and Restaurant in Presque Isle. The town will continue to use the building until December 2007.

After considering its options for relocating, the council approved an expansion at the community center.

The two-story addition, which will create 3,000 square feet of space on each floor, will allow the police station to locate on the first floor and the town office to be placed on the second floor.

There will be enough room left over to add an 800-square-foot council chambers – the town does not have one now – as well as space for the local chamber of commerce, which currently is renting space on Main Street.

Foster said if the $1.25 million funding package is approved, the town will put in its bond application for $1 million immediately. He said the remaining $250,000 will come from several sources – the $100,000 from the sale of the old town office, the $102,000 raised by local citizens for the pool, about $22,500 in grant money, and the rest from the town’s undesignated surplus.

The Fort Fairfield Town Council is expected to vote on the matter immediately after the Jan. 24 public hearing. If approved, the projects could be under way as soon as weather permits.

The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, in the cafeteria of the Fort Fairfield Middle-High School.