HAMBURG, N.Y. — Monday night, roughly 300 residents in the Town of Hamburg showed up to the town’s public meeting to express their frustrations with a decision from the Frontier Central School District.
The decision would allow the district to take back at least a portion of a building that it has leased to the town of Hamburg for the last decade and houses programs for senior citizens and youth recreation.
According to Hamburg residents, the building become an integral part of their community over the past decade, serving upwards of 250 residents each day.
But now residents and the town’s supervisor fear that time may be up.
The Frontier Central School District wants to use the building to open a new program that would give students real-world professional experience outside of the classroom.
But as much as the district’s focus in this decision is on the students, many residents feel that their responsibility to the community as educators extends beyond that.
“I understand it's K-12, but education doesn't end at 12,” Hamburg resident Julianna Hugick said. “It goes on for your whole life, and seniors are included in that also.”
According to the town’s supervisors, the town has pumped $2 million into this building to offer seniors and youth a wide array of programs from hot lunches to summer sports leagues that its supervisor says can’t be adequately replaced if the programs should need to relocate.
“The town would be a very different experience for those 250 people that come to this community center every day,” Hamburg town supervisor Randy Hoak said. “For folks that don't have the opportunity to socialize in a setting like this, they would be home alone, and they would suffer the impacts of social isolation.”
Now all this comes in response to a 19-year lease signed between the two back in 2013 that would allow either party to terminate the agreement after 10 years and the town to buy the building for $1 at the end of the term.
But after the district announced its intentions to take it over at the 10-year mark, the town offered to buy the building for a price the district claims is far short of what would be necessary to pay off bonds used to build it in the first place, which is why the district says it wants to compromise and share the space for at least the next few years.
2 On Your Side went to the Frontier Central School District board meeting tonight to speak with the superintendent and get clarification about their intentions to reclaim the building, but they declined to comment.