The Rochester Board of Selectmen plan on meeting with the public, the Town Hall Annex Building Committee and the Finance Committee in the new year to discuss the future of the Town Hall.

Currently, Chair Naida Parker said the committee decided they were going to focus solely on building an annex, and that as long as it would just be an annex building she would support their decision.

“It needs to be a very singular focus,” she said.

Resident David Eckert didn’t agree with the town building any type of administrative building, and said he doesn’t think other voters will either.

“At the special Town Meeting in October the voters spoke pretty loudly and pretty clearly… that we do not want our taxpayer dollars spent on constructing a new building in town,” he said. “That measure was soundly defeated…yet I’m aware that the Town Annex Building Committee is in favor of building a new administrative building and the [Finance Committee] seemed to be advocating building a new building…”

Eckert also said that he believes most, if not all, of the support for any type of new building is coming strictly from town employees and not from the residents.

“There seems to be a wide gap between the will of voters and the will of elected officials,” he said. “That big of a gap in a democracy can’t be sustained. It gets closed one way or another…”

Parker said her main concern was that she was not comfortable with continuously leasing the Woman’s Club, and said she wasn’t sure if the voters were either.

“My biggest question is whether the voters wish to continue a lease on a building that we don’t own and that we could be asked to leave at some point,” she said. “When you’re renting there’s a big difference in equity and ability to manage what you’re doing.”

However, Eckert maintained that he doesn’t believe voters care about that, they just don’t want to spend the money to build.

“Voters clearly don’t want a new administrative building of any kind,” he said. “I think there are some very effective ways that we could deal with issues without at all constructing anything new.”

Selectman Richard Nunes also said he was in favor of the annex being built, but that there needed to be more discussion between everyone involved before moving forward.