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Date: 5/25/2022
OTIS — The historical Episcopal church in the center of Otis will live on as a community center, following a unanimous vote by Town Meeting on May 17.
The next step is finding out what the community wants.
One and a half years after the town accepted the donation of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 13 Monterey Rd., Otis, voters agreed to use the 1827 building “for social, cultural and educational purposes.”
Gail Gelburd, of the Otis Historical Commission, said the Otis Preservation Trust has raised $350,000 toward the restoration of the building, just under half the $750,000 goal for a three-phase project. She said the preservation groups envision the unheated building being used for arts events, children’s programs and community gatherings from May to October each year. The groups are distributing a survey to gauge public interest.
The survey asks three questions: What the building should be named, what public activities Otis residents would like to see there, and what private or fee-based activities residents would like to see. The four names suggested for the building are Otis Cultural Center, Otis Heritage Center, Otis Center, and St. Paul’s Place.
Paper surveys were handed out at Town Meeting, and can also be downloaded at optin.today/pages/survey, and returned to the town library or Town Hall. The survey closes at the end of May.
Once reopened, the church could also regain its former use as a summer worship space for Episcopal congregants, who would rent the space. Though built by members of the congregation, the church building was owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts before being gifted to the town in November 2019. The diocese had earlier closed the parish and planned to sell the property.
No town funding for St. Paul’s was attached to this year’s Town Meeting warrant article.
Voters on May 17 also supported another property targeted for restoration by the Otis Historical Commission and Otis Preservation Trust. The town will spend $25,868, and the preservation trust will spend $15,000, to match a $101,500 state grant to restore the East Otis Schoolhouse, a one-room schoolhouse at 2 Old Blandford Rd. in use from about 1850 to the mid-1950s.
Also at Town Meeting, Otis voters unanimously approved a $5,978,732.06 fiscal year 2023 budget without amendment. The meeting unanimously rejected a petition by Sandisfield residents to change the way votes are recorded at the Farmington River Regional School Committee.
In their sole split vote of the evening, a large majority of voters supported a petition calling on the state to adopt the “Fair Share Amendment,” a surtax on incomes over $1 million that will appear as a referendum question on the November 2022 state ballot. About nine of the 66 registered voters at the meeting voted against the petition.
All other articles passed unanimously.