FAYETTE — The town of Fayette will vote on Nov. 5 whether to force a sale of historic town-owned Starling Hall by the end of next year, after a petition signed by more than 110 residents demanded a referendum on the issue.

The Fayette Board of Selectmen on Tuesday night unanimously decided to hold the Starling Hall referendum on the same day as the presidential election to ensure the highest possible voter turnout. Starling Hall, built in 1875, is the oldest building in Maine to have been built as a Grange Hall.

The petition, led by the town’s budget committee chair Brent St. Clair and officially submitted to the town late last month, is the latest in a string of efforts against putting taxpayer funding into Starling Hall.

In 2022, residents narrowly rejected a $500,000 bond to match a federal grant for renovations to the building. 

St. Clair led a successful petition effort that same year to limit spending on the building to $5,000 a year, but unsuccessfully opposed providing $15,000 from a town surplus for an engineering study on Starling Hall this June at the town’s annual meeting. Two other budget committee members, Katie Pepper and Ellie Andrews, also signed the petition and recommended against approving the engineering study in June.

The local nonprofit Friends of Starling Hall, meanwhile, has raised more than $300,000 for renovations to the building since it was founded in 2014. The group has paid to move the building 35 feet back from the road, installed heating and air conditioning and provided new electrical service to the building, among other renovations.

The town has historically paid for regular maintenance and utilities, while the Friends of Starling Hall has paid for renovations.

Several years ago, the town approved a $100,000 bond for renovations to Starling Hall, with the understanding that it would be paid back entirely by the Friends of Starling Hall. Since then, the group has made all payments on the bond, totaling about $40,000.

Significant improvements would still be required to make the building an accessible regular meeting place for the public, including improving ease of access to the second floor and installing Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant restrooms.

Joe Young, a former longtime selectman who was president of the Friends of Starling Hall before he resigned last week because of the conflict over the future of the hall, said the petition was a “slap in the face” to residents who have been working for years for the restoration of the historic building.

“If they want to piss away over $300,000 worth of investments in that building, the town doesn’t deserve it,” Young said.

One of the reasons Young sees value in Starling Hall is its potential as a future town office, replacing the current building, which has struggled with structural and storage issues. Robinson, the town manager, works in the basement of the town office, which was identified by an engineering firm in 2014 as being “not appropriate” for long-term office space due to mildew, mold and building code noncompliance.

St. Clair said during Tuesday’s meeting that he wanted the town to sell the hall several years ago, but decided to give the Friends of Starling Hall more time to acquire funding from grants and donations.

Now, he said, he thinks the group has not raised enough money for the building and wants to settle the issue for good.

“It’s caused real division in the town,” St. Clair said during the meeting. “It’s caused the town to be splintered. We’re not working together anymore. No matter what the issue is, it seems to be polarized, just like political parties. I want to be done with this.”

Jon Beekman, a member of the Friends of Starling Hall, led an effort to hold a town vote on selling the building a decade ago while he was on the Board of Selectmen. Back then, he also wanted the issue to be resolved once and for all.

He opposes the effort now, he said, because neither possible result of the November referendum will solve the divide in town over the future of the building. And he is holding out hope that the selectmen will choose to hold the vote later, rather than on Election Day, so the group can gather more support.

Fayette Board of Selectmen Chair Lacy Badeau said during the meeting she hopes the town will hold a public hearing on the referendum once each month until the November election, the first of which is scheduled for Aug. 20 at Fayette Central School.