Dorchester leaves Memorial Hall ’s lease unchanged
By Nathaniel Underwood
Recent discussions regarding Dorchester’s Memorial Hall reached a conclusion of sorts during the village board's last meeting on April 2.
While there has been a number of conversations around adjusting the lease to better clarify the responsibilities of the renter and the village, as well as the monthly rental fee, the board ultimately decided to stay with the existing lease for the next year.
While many of the suggested changes were approved by the board at the February meeting, the Public Works, Village Buildings and Utilities committee recommended that the board continue with the old lease, at least until the details of the new lease can be hammered out.
“The new lease, the way that we were going to do it, there were some hiccups with it,” said board trustee Eric Klemetson, a member of the committee who was tasked with updating the lease. “There’s a couple things in there that weren’t meshing and we were kind of running out of time here. So here we are, and we all agreed to recommend going with the old lease this time.”
“If we decide to go with the old lease, then we can move forward and work through (the details) this next year on the new lease, if we still want to go that route,” he added. “It’s just going to give us a little more time. It kind of sprung us a little bit at the end there and we just ran out of time.”
Some of the recommended changes that were discussed and approved by the board at their February meeting included an increase in the rental price to $500 per month. The renter would also have more control over what events may be held there and would keep any profits from such events. Additional clarifications were made regarding responsibilities over payments for utilities, garbage disposal and insurance.
Klemetson also noted that the committee possibly should have involved their lawyer earlier in the process in an attempt to get it done before the April renewal. With the vast restructuring of the lease, the committee drew up a new lease with their desired changes before sending it along to the village’s lawyer.
“I’ll take blame too,” he said. “We should have had Bonnie (Wachsmuth) working on it right away as opposed to trying to have meetings to try to draw up our own lease. She’s the professional, just pay her to do it. She just made some changes (when she received it) and it just didn’t happen in time.”
“As a committee, we wanted to make sure we had our P’s and Q’s before we gave it over to Bonnie, because we don’t want to pass it off to Bonnie more than once because that costs the village money,” board trustee Julie Goldschmidt later added.
With the old, one-year agreement coming to an end at the end of the month and the unfinished status of the new lease, the committee recommended that the board move forward with the old lease for now.
However, there was an understanding among the trustees that there’s still a possibility of installing the new lease before the year-long contract expires next April.
If the new lease agreement were to be finished before the current one runs its course, then it could be put into place if both the board and the renter decided to end the current lease early. If that were to happen, the new lease could then be installed.
“We can keep working on it and we can sign the new lease agree-
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ment mid-year if we have to,” board president Kurt Schwoch said.
A 90-day lease was suggested, but the board did not wish to go that route as it would not give the renter ample ability to book out future events, especially during what would be the potentially busy summer months.
The board moved to move forward with the old lease agreement for this coming year, with everyone but trustee Tom Carter voting in favor.
Other business
■ The board agreed to allow Ice Oval Unlimited Inc. to utilize the same parcels of village land for their snowmobile races for next winter. There was discussion as to whether they wished to extend the offer past this year, but the board was hesitant to confirm anything beyond next winter, in the event that an entity wished to purchase the land for development.
■ An insurance plan at the cost of $42,531 to cover the village’s buildings and equipment from Spectnim Insurance was approved. This was roughly only a $300 increase from last year’s cost.
■ Trustee Klemetson told the board that he plans to retain his position as trastee following the April 2 election that saw him voted back to the post. Klemetson had informed the board earlier that he was going to take a step back during the February meeting, so clarification was needed on whether he would be remaining on the board or if the board would need to nominate someone in instead.
