The Town Council recently approved a motion that is expected to bring at least $691,000 to the Bay Spring Community Center. 

At the Sept. 11 meeting, members of the Barrington Town Council voted 4-0 to authorize the Town Manager to sign the “Rhode Island Community Learning Center Compact,” which carries a large grant award. 

The Multipurpose Community Facilities Municipal grant will total at least $691,369 for Barrington and possibly more, if other communities do not participate in the program. The money must be used for a multipurpose community facility project. 

Barrington Town Manager Phil Hervey said the Bay Spring Community Center would be the perfect spot for the investment. 

In an earlier memo to the Council, Hervey wrote “Expansion and renovation of the BSCC (Bay Spring Community Center) is feasible. In addition, the Friends of the Bay Spring Community Center and the Town have begun discussing how to make better use of the building, which the Resilience and Energy Committee has identified as the location of a new ‘Resilience Education Center.’”

During the Sept. 11 meeting, Hervey shared some of the requirements associated with the grant money. He said there is a health monitoring component and a jobs component — the town would need to use some of the building as space for residents to conduct tele-health appointments; they would also need to avail space to residents to conduct online job interviews.

He said the building would need to be open to the general public during normal business hours. Right now, the Bay Spring Community Center is not open 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. 

“The Town would need to figure out how to staff the building to comply with this requirement,” Hervey wrote in his memo to the Council. “This could involve creating a new position, possibly part-time, and/or utilizing existing staff to keep the building operating during weekdays.”

Hervey said the grant could allow for significant upgrades to the building. 

“It’s a major opportunity,” Hervey said. “That building has structural challenges and this funding could address that as well.”

A Barrington resident posed some questions before Hervey fully explained the grant requirement. Janine Wolfe was concerned the grant could negatively impact the programs that currently use the Bay Spring Community Center. She also wondered aloud if a health monitoring program might be some type of health or vaccine passport program that would bar unvaccinated people from using the facility. 

Hervey said that was not the case and assured Wolfe that nothing nefarious was being proposed through the grant program. 

In his memo to the Council, Hervey wrote that the RI Community Learning Center Compact was an addendum to the Learn365RI compact, which Barrington has already signed. As part of that agreement, the town was awarded $50,000 to fund out-of-school learning initiatives.

“…we are working with the Schools to implement the program, which will be based at the Bay Spring Community Center,” Hervey wrote.

There is no local match required with the Multipurpose Community Facilities Municipal Grant program. There are, however, hard deadlines associated with it.

Hervey said the application for the grant funding is due by Oct. 10 at 11:59 p.m. He added that the full grant must be expended and program operational by Dec. 31, 2026.

“If the funds are not spent by that date with programs up and running, the Town would have to repay 100 percent of the grant allocation. There are no exceptions to that requirement,” Hervey wrote.

Council member Kate Berard had a few questions about the proposal. She asked if the town had additional funding sources so as to ensure that any part of the improvements not covered by the grant money would not stall the work and jeopardize the project.

Hervey said the town has money in its capital reserve account for the Bay Spring Community Center. 

Eventually, the Council voted 4-0 to authorize Hervey to sign the compact. The Council also voted 4-0 to approve the expenditure of $19,300 to an architectural firm to complete designs for the Bay Spring Community Center improvements. Hervey specified that the town would not sign the agreement with the firm unless Barrington was awarded the grant from the state.