At our November meeting, we made a good start on formulating a strategy to reduce our property taxes. As loyal readers, you will already know that at about $7,000 per year, these are a huge part of our overhead. If we could reduce that load, it would take a lot of pressure off our annual budget.
So what should we do? The town of Berlin, where the Hall is located is not known for its generosity in granting tax relief; in Vermont it is up to local towns to decide on what organizations get tax relief. We are in one of only 5 states which tax Grange Halls, and the Halls of other fraternal organizations–in the others, the Halls are exempt by law.
At our meeting, we debated a variety of approaches: appealing to the Town of Berlin? trying to get the State of Vermont to change the tax status of all fraternal organizations? We found that transferring the ownership to a 501c(3) (like the FCCGH) would require getting permission from the State Grange; this is not likely to be granted, under the Grange Charter. While we are responsible for the Hall’s bills, taxes, rentals and maintenance, it’s ownership is still controlled by the State Grange.
In the end, we decided that for any of the possible strategies, we need to get reliable facts with which to work. Alison Forrest, Marj P0wer and Merry Shernock volunteered to get information on the other Granges who own Halls more or less like ours, and to research the Grand List of properties in Berlin, and other towns. The goal is to compare the taxes and any tax arrangements there are for other Grange Halls. At our next meeting, on Dec. 6th, we’ll see what the next steps should be.
Grangers to Help with Pumpkin Show 2015
Offering to help our neighbors
Also at our November meeting, we talked about the pumpkin shows now being held at at least a couple of other places in Vermont–the Settlement Farm in Middlesex on Rt. 2, and one in Williamstown. Most of us also have fond memories of the “original” pumpkin show, put on for many years by Karen Moynihan of Ellie’s Farm Market, just a little south of Riverton on Rt. 12–just 5 or 10 minutes south of the Grange Hall. Karen used to carve–literally–up to a thousand pumpkins, doing all the decorative carving herself, but getting help from volunteers to “de-gut” the pumpkin shells. She used the show to collect donations for various worthy causes, as the “successor” shows are also doing.
Karen from Ellie’s gave up doing the pumpkin show a few years ago when her husband was recovering from medical problems, but has been talking about doing “one more show for the grand-kids who never saw it”. So we voted to offer volunteer help for cleaning out pumpkins if and when she is ready to take it on again. We’ll keep you posted next fall if we need to collect some volunteers for this epic task!
New Rental Manager and Phone Number
New volunteer Rental Manager and rental phone number for the Grange
We are making a transfer from Jody Pettersen, who has very ably managed all the rentals of the Hall for about the last 8 years. Jody has done a great job, and she’s ready to pass the torch. We’re very lucky that Merry Shernock has volunteered to step into her very large shoes!
As part of this change-over, and along with putting up the new sign, we’re changing the contact info for the rentals. Merry is setting up the Grange’s existing phone number–802-229-9425–to be connected to “GoogleVoice” answering/forwarding service. This will forward every voicemail left to Merry’s phone, plus sending an email to her alerting her to the message. This way, she can monitor the contacts from anywhere.
Merry is looking for collaborators on rental policy and contacts–we all need help and input. If you want to help the Grange with an important part of our survival, please contact Merry–soon, you can leave a message on the Grange phone number to reach her!
Grange Sign from the ground up!
The photo at the top of this email shows the concrete going into the forms for the new Grange sign. Kurt Giavara (right) supervised setting the “big-foot” type forms the week before; I arranged to get some stainless steel bars to anchor in the concrete along with more commercial post-bases. On Friday the 14th, we had the forms filled with concrete, and placed the stainless bars and dummy “posts” in the concrete, at the correct spacing to match the posts and cherry cross-piece donated by TimberHomes LLC. Dave Cain is preparing the lettering on the cherry piece so that we can erect the parts soon.
Looking for carpentry volunteers to help us put up the posts, and to build and install the small roof for the sign. If there is someone who could bring an 8′ or 10′ stepladder, that would be an extra help! Please contact me if you can help us! As usual I can be reached at 225-8921, or the email address for these Grange Notes.
After the whole sign is up, we’ll have electrician Alana Norway pull wires through the conduits placed during the summer by another crew of volunteers. She’ll also install the fluorescent lights which will illuminate the sign. We’ve decided to put the lights on a timer so they will be on from about dusk to midnight, so our sign will be visible.
Our intent is to increase our recognition, so people will know where our Hall is, and that it is available for rental. The sign will give the website, and the phone number for rentals–see below for a transition in our rental agent. As regular readers will know, we badly need to get more tenants to balance our budget. And providing a Hall for public use is the major community service which our Grange provides.
Improving Fire Safety
We’re making the Grange a safer place with our projects to improve the fire exits from the basement level. This re-construction of both exits, funded by the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall, is in response to the requirements of the Fire Marshal. The new stairs and door on the NW corner of the building have been built by contractor John Mallery; he hired a concrete-cutting company to cut through the outside wall of the basement. John has also framed in the new vestibule at the South end of the basement, around the existing stairs. The new door has a magnetic hold-open, so it can be open for foot traffic, but will close automatically if the new smoke/fire detectors are triggered. The sheetrock and painting are done, and the new doors are installed. Electrical work has been roughed-in and must be completed before the Fire Marshal will sign off on the project–and increase our legal capacity in the basement from its current 49, up to at least 100, we expect!
We are still fundraising and arranging financing for the 2nd phase of this project, rebuilding the bathrooms on the basement level. Keep in touch for updates on this part of the project too! And many thanks to the Legislature for funding the “Cultural Facilities” grant which will be paying for 1/2 of this project–once we raise the matching funds we need!
The fire exit at the northwest corner has been completely re-built; the original stairs were too steep and too little headroom; we had to cut through the concrete wall of the basement to make the stairs come out at ground level. You can see the difference from the outline of the old stairs on the wall!
The Fire Marshal required that we build a vestibule with 1-hour fire rated walls and a door, to separate the downstairs and upstairs levels. 
The new door in the vestibule can be held open with an electro-magnet. If we ever have a fire, the new smoke alarms on either side of the door will make the magnet release to separate the upstairs and downstairs spaces.
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