ORANGE – The town’s community development director says she feels she has a better idea of the Selectboard’s priorities following its most recent meeting.

Walker Powell remotely attended the Aug. 21 meeting and spoke with the board about where she should focus her time and energy. Board Chair Tom Smith and Vice Chair Pat Lussier said they would like Powell to concentrate on the former Butterfield School, increasing housing in town and finding a better location for the Highway Department’s salt shed. She said she will create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and fill it with information about projects and grants by the end of this week.

“I’ll update the one that I sent out in May to make sure it’s correct and add some timelines to it,” Powell told the Selectboard at the meeting.

Lussier, who serves as Powell’s liaison to the Selectboard, said she met with Powell and learned the community development director and conservation agent wanted more direction from the governing board.

The former Butterfield School closed in 2015 to alleviate Orange’s financial woes. At the time, it was Orange’s third elementary school. There has been talk of converting the 94 South Main St. building into apartments, a senior center, or a facility that houses both. Lussier said more designs and plans are needed before the town can apply for grants.

“We can’t just keep putting it on the back burner,” she said at the Selectboard meeting. “We’ve got to meet it head-on. We’ve got to do something.”

Another issue, said Lussier, is increasing and improving housing in town to accommodate a larger population and bring in more business. She said there is a possibility of working with Rural Development, Inc., a nonprofit corporation launched by the Franklin County Regional Housing and Redevelopment Authority in 1991 to address housing needs.

“Most of these developers rely on grants and there’s usually a contribution of some sort from the town, and it could be town-owned land where we would want to think about having housing,” she said.

The Selectboard also discussed the need to move or restore the Highway Department’s deteriorating salt shed, which sits on East River Street near the Millers River.

“It’s not great,” Powell told the Recorder. “The salt kind of leaks out of the bottom of the building at this point.”

Lussier said Greenfield changed the location of its salt shed.

“And what they put up was a very simple structure — just sides and a canvas covering over the top — and apparently it’s working very well,” she told her colleagues. “It’s very cost-effective and very substantial and sturdy. It’s getting rave reviews over there.”

Larry Delaney, the town’s superintendent of highway, cemeteries and parks, said obtaining any salt from the shed requires at least two crew members, one to drive a front-end loader or backhoe to load the salt into a truck and another one to spread the salt on town roadways. He said the shed is a mile from the Highway Department.

“If the salt shed was here at the Highway Department, we would simply drive the truck down, load the truck and go off and do what we need to,” he said. “It would be more efficient.”

Also on the Selectboard’s radar is the future of the Orange Armory. The structure, built in 1913, has fallen into disrepair. The Selectboard voted in October 2021 to close it, temporarily relocate the municipal offices based there, and work out a lease to operate out of the rectory of the former Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, which a handful of years ago gave its facilities to Mission Covenant Church for social and faith-based activities.

Henry Oertel, who volunteers to watch over the building, has said he handles the mechanical work at the Armory and there has been as much as two feet of water in the basement, which he said has a floor that is slippery with water damage and mold. He previously said he has established a functional but delicate sump pump system and has arranged blocks to walk on because he has “taken a few slips and slides and destroyed my clothes.” There is also a leaky oil tank.

Powell told the Recorder that the Franklin Regional Council of Governments has received a grant for a hazardous materials assessment and chosen the Armory as a project that will benefit from it. This assessment must be conducted before Orange applies for grants.

Rounding off the Selectboard’s priority list is the public safety complex proposed for 574 East River St. to replace at the fire station at 18 Water St. and the police station at 400 East River St.

The LiRo Group, an architecture, engineering and construction firm, has suggested a roughly 30,000-square-foot structure with two floors on the Fire Department side and one on the police portion. The Fire Department side would be constructed with charred wood, whereas brick or metal would likely be used for the police side.

The new space also would allow firefighters the room to safely decontaminate their gear on-site, greatly reducing the likelihood of harmful particles wafting through the station or being brought home to firefighters’ families. Cancer is a leading cause of death among firefighters, whose gear often becomes contaminated with carcinogenic material at fire scenes. Currently, firefighters must remove and bag their gear at a fire scene and bring it to the secondary station on Mill Yard Road, the only one with the proper cleaning equipment.

Orange Fire Chief James Young previously said his department has operated out of the Water Street station since it was built in 1936. He said the department has for years had to order customized apparatus to fit into the station’s bay.

The space at 574 East River St. is a former youth football field between the highway garage and a dirt access road to the Orange Municipal Airport hangars.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.