Graham City Hall employees make move to new location

This week, Graham City Hall has moved from its 4th and Oak St. location to the former American Legion Building on Elm St. within the downtown square, after the project spanning a little over a year came to a completion.

The project was funded by a $300,000 Bertha Foundation grant received by the city. Discussions began about the move in 2018 and Mayor Neal Blanton and City Manager Brandon Anderson met with civic clubs to talk about transitioning the American Legion Building into a new location for city hall.

“We met with really all of the participants that meet here on a regular basis, which is Rotary, Lions (Club), Kiwanis, Evening Lions (Club), the Chamber (of Commerce) and just told them what we were trying to do and what we were looking at doing, which would be moving city hall into this area over here and creating offices and a city hall that meet the requirements of what we establish as being a safe working environment for our employees, a clean working environment for our employees, one that meets ADA requirements and one that meets parking and access to the building,” Blanton said in a 2018 interview.

North Central Texas College took in the civic clubs who met at the American Legion Buildings, but several community members showed their opposition to the move at several city council meetings throughout 2019. During a July 22, 2019 city council meeting, Blanton said the property was being rented 1.7 times per month over the last three years on average, with many other locations being chosen instead. Anderson, during a 2019 presentation regarding the move to the Graham Build Local group, said it provided a savings to the clubs overall.

“We were having to charge a fee in here of $3 per member per meeting,” Anderson said in a previous meeting. “The last four years the city has actually lost $46,000 over that time for an average of about $11,500 per year is what our loss has been(…) not that that is a big issue, but that is charging those civic clubs. Well at NCTC, for instance the Rotary with their attendance, they are actually saving $10,000 per year because she is not charging, so that $10,000 can go right back into the programs that Rotary is doing.”

The reasoning for the move was because of limited parking, difficulty parking for some community members at the old location and to keep the office safe and current under the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements placed on municipalities which was something the older structure was not adhering to.

For the full story, see the Saturday, April 25 edition of The Graham Leader.