Broome — For decades, highway personnel in this rural town of about 950 people in southeastern Schoharie County have been struggling to find room to work on trucks in the garage building that also houses the Town Board and court, according to Highway Superintendent Michael Parker.

In an effort to persuade voters to approve building a new garage and town hall, the Town Board is holding an open house and discussion tonight at 6 at the town barn at 914 state Route 145, south of Franklinton Vly pond.

“It’s so people can see what the building looks like, and see the conditions that our highway department is working under,” Deputy Town Supervisor Celia Kossow said Monday.

On Nov. 4 — in addition to picking a president, federal and state legislators, and a town justice — the approximately 610 registered voters in the town will be asked to approve a proposition authorizing the Town Board to spend up to $800,000 for a new highway garage and office complex that will combine all the town offices in a building attached to the garage. The proposed 4,800-square-foot, 60-by-80-foot garage area would provide four bays with space for four trucks.

The design calls for a wood and metal building with protective stone veneer on lower portions, Parker said.

The proposed building, downsized from an 80-by-80-foot garage planned earlier this year, will also include a community room available for various public meetings, clubs and the like.

The town has about $200,000 already set aside, and the proposition, approved by the board Aug. 26, would authorize the town to borrow a maximum of $500,000 for the building.

Depending on various factors, including interest rates, the project is expected to cost owners of the approximately 2,100 parcels in the town roughly 60 cents per $1,000 of assessed property valuation annually until the borrowed money is repaid, according Kossow and Parker.

For a taxpayer with property assessed at $100,000, for example, that would total about $60 in additional taxes.

Most of that would fall on residential properties, including a sizeable number of seasonal homes, according to officials.

“The problem is, we don’t have any [significant nonresidential] tax base,” Parker said. “We don’t have businesses.”

Given the condition of the current garage and offices, “something is going to have to happen,” Parker said.

“It’s not that we just ‘want’ a new building,” Parker stressed. “It is that we need a new building.”

The current garage/town hall is a former creamery that was moved to its current location approximately 75 years ago, Parker believes.

“It’s been here as long as I can remember,” said Parker, 50, a Broome native.

“My biggest obstacle is in the winter, when three of my [five] big plow trucks don’t fit in there.” That sometimes forces his four workers to work on them outside in sub-freezing weather.

Because the second floor flunked a weight-bearing test about five years ago, Parker said, town records that used to be stored there are now kept in a rented storage space about 20 miles away in Cobleskill.

A small office that doubles as a break room for highway workers is also where the Town Board meets and court is held.

That leaves only seven chairs for the general public at board sessions.

Town Clerk Anne Batz has her office in an old trailer across the truck lot. That’s where the new building is planned.

While the trailer also houses desks for Supervisor Marie Campbell, the assessor and building codes officer, only the clerk’s office is legally open to the public because it has a handicapped-access ramp, said Code Enforcement Officer Lance Becker.

“There’s a lot of code violations in these buildings,” Becker said. Because the town is working on a solution, he said, state officials haven’t been pressing the issue. “But one accident and we’re done,” Becker said.

Occasional large public meetings, even jury trials, are sometimes held at Teter Hall in Livingstonville, owned by the Broome Volunteer Fire Department. “A lot of people think the town owns that, but we don’t.” Kossow noted.

Proposals for a Town Hall/garage complex have been kicking around for years, Parker said.

A total of $55,000 provided from the state Senate, via Sen. James L. Seward in 2006 and 2008, has already been spent for design and planning by the Laberge Group, an Albany-based architectural firm, for a larger plan for 80-by-80-foot garage, Kossow said.

After bids came in last February at $1,050,000, that plan was scaled back.

The board approved another $4,500 last month to cover redesign expenses, Kossow said.