CHANUTE — Funding for upgrades to Chanute’s historic train depot will hinge on an upcoming sales tax referendum.
Local voters will decide in the November general election whether to extend a quarter-cent sales tax to fund upgrades for a number of city facilities, including the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Train Depot, which houses the Chanute Public Library and the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum.
The building, which was last remodeled in the early 1990s, faces a laundry list of needs, most prominently a new HVAC system priced at $1 million or more.
Problem was, the old lease agreement between the three entities did not give the city explicit authority for repairs. A new agreement — approved separately this month by city commissioners and the library and museum’s boards of directors — does, while directing the library and museum to pay rent.
The rent payments will go in an escrow account to help pay for maintenance needs.
REACHING the new deal wasn’t an easy task.
Both the library and museum boards hesitated to sign the pact earlier this month, citing ambiguity in the lease regarding the city’s responsibility for such things as the HVAC system.
That, in turn, prompted commissioners at their Sept. 11 meeting to give both the library and museum two weeks to ratify the agreement or be considered in breach of the old lease. That decision triggered a fierce outcry in the days that followed.
Cooler heads prevailed Monday.
Library director Jeana Lawrence noted Monday the library board signed the lease last week, but still had questions on such items as the process to follow regarding emergency repairs, who would be responsible for keeping the parking lot cleared in snowy weather, who mows the property, “and the biggest question of all: where do we go forward on replacing HVAC?”
Representatives from all three entities expressed optimism at Monday’s Chanute City Commission meeting.
“I’m hopeful the library and museum will be able to come together and find answers to these questions and we can still move forward as partners and maintain our historic depot,” Lawrence said.
Garrett Sharp, who serves as vice president on the museum’s board of directors, echoed Lawrence’s desire for a strong working relationship with the city.
“As we’ve signed the lease along with the library, we’re asking the city to move forward with a plan for the HVAC,” Sharp said. “And we’re asking citizens of Chanute to get out and vote ‘yes’ on the quarter-cent sales tax in November to help pay for these costs.”
“What I feel is most people feel a great satisfaction for the existence of that depot, not because of bricks, but because of hearts that refurbished it,” City Commissioner Tim Fairchild said.
The depot, which faced a wrecking ball in the late 1980s before townsfolk raised funds to refurbish it once they realized the library and museum could use the structure, is illustrative of civic support for a historic institution, Fairchild said.
