Louisville board OKs new $1.1M town hall

By Melissa Sherrod
Daily Times Correspondent

The Louisville Board of Mayor and Aldermen unanimously passed a resolution to build a $1.1 million town hall/community center.

The board approved the resolution Monday night after listening to Tom Bickers, a member of the Louisville Planning Commission who represented a citizens group promoting the project.

An anonymous donor has offered a $250,000 challenge grant to raise funds for the new town hall. The grant will distribute $50,000 a year for five years if the town raises a matching amount.

Bickers asked the board to adopt the resolution with certain conditions:

n no debt past the five-year term of the matching grant

n no long-term loans

n no taxes

n a building committee sanctioned by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen

n appropriation from town funds of $50,000 for due diligence by the building committee

n the reservation of an additional $500,000 from town funds.

The town hall can be constructed at the present site of the current town hall since the acreage is already there and available, but the building committee could explore other locations.

Bickers explained his vision of the town hall/community center. Concerned that Louisville will become "a collection of subdivisions and residential clusters," he said, "We don't have an established downtown area that's been there for years where everybody gathers to work and to shop and to go to the bank...and the challenge is what can we do to try to build that sense of community?"

He suggested the town hall project would be the answer.

Jere Ingram, one of the fund-raising captains of the project, said the citizens group had already raised $153,000 in three weeks and had several other verbal commitments. He said that the average donation to date was $7,650. He urged everyone to donate.

"A couple years from now, when you drive down this road, you'll look over and say, I've got a little piece of that over there.' I know some folks can't give as much others. If you could give $500 a year, that'd be great. I just ask everybody to consider it."

Louisville citizen Diana Morgan expressed unease with a major town project being built with anonymously donated funds right before an election, citing the public's mistrust since the mayor's first announcement before the 2006 election that an anonymous donor would build a town hall.

"I'm glad you have said that this is going to be an open process, because it absolutely has to be. Relevant to that open process, I am not comfortable with a private foundation or individual that is involved in large acreages of land that will be asking eventually for rezoning."

Alderman Sandy Murrin affirmed the need to move forward and said that she was saddened by the trust that the community had lost in its officials and each other. "This town is the most divided town that I have ever seen," she said. "The main thing is, the trust is lost."

Bickers replied that coming together on a new town hall would be a healing process for the town.

Morgan wondered if the vote could be put off until after the election so no one could say it was an election ploy.

Bickers replied that he didn't want to wait because momentum would be lost. "Let's put the building committee to work; they can gather information that they should gather," he said. "I would expect the actual ground breaking would happen after the election. There's going to be plenty of time for people to understand that this isn't an election ploy. If they're involved in the process, they can see it for themselves."