The new committee charged with determining the cost of building the Town House at the site of the VFW has no money to explore that option, Town House Building Committee members aren’t sure why the new committee exists, and the timeline for the project – in whatever form – remains murky.

The Town House Building Committee has met regularly for the past five years to explore options and possibilities for a new or renovated Town House. In May, it proposed a project with an almost $12 million price tag that would have maintained the historical integrity of the current building and provided enough space for all departments and a large meeting room. It also would have solved numerous building code, fire code and accessibility violations, and resulted in an exponentially more energy-efficient building.

But the proposal was met with trepidation by both officials and residents who balked at the price, and thus, was scrapped from the Fall Town Meeting agenda with the Building Committee members agreeing to evaluate other options, including a scaled-down project.

Further complicating decision making, the Benjamin D. Cushing Post, responding to declining membership, opted to donate the VFW building on Marion Road to the town. The donation was accepted by Fall Town Meeting voters in October, and last month, Selectmen appointed a committee to explore the possibility of building a Town House at the VFW site.

There are Community Preservation Act funds earmarked for a study of what a renovation of the existing Town House might look like. CPA funds are generated through a surcharge on property taxes. Any use of the money must be approved by voters at Town Meeting. The new committee thought those funds could be used to study the VFW site.

“We believe using the funds is fully within the intent of the funds,” said Alan Minard, who, along with Planning Board Chair Rob Lane, floated the idea of the exploratory committee to Selectmen. “We would use it to create a floor plan and elevation plans and get cost estimates.”

Minard serves as chair of the Finance Committee, though he and Lane told Selectmen that they appeared before them only as private citizens — not representatives of their respective boards.

The Selectmen OK’d the creation of the committee, but earlier this month, it was determined that the Community Preservation funding Minard and Lane thought they could use would be outside the scope of what was approved by Town Meeting voters.

So, the new committee’s only option is to ask for money at Town Meeting in May.

But the Town House Building Committee isn’t sure why the new committee needs to exist.

“Last year our architects designed a new building, they did schematics, they did a cost estimate,” said Building Committee Chair Bob Raymond. “We figure we at least have preliminary ideas.”

When the Building Committee had an architect look into the idea of a new building, it used the baseball field next to the current Town House as its hypothetical site.

“The VFW building isn’t any different than the ball field,” Raymond said in noting why his committee could explore the VFW site as part of its duties. “I don’t see any reason why it would be different.”

The Building Committee is hosting a public forum on Jan. 26 and plans to present its study of building a Town House on the baseball field as its explanation on what a new building will cost. A preliminary number for a new building at the VFW site is a little more than $8 million, but Raymond stressed that isn’t set in stone.

In the meantime, the Building Committee has redesigned some Town House options to make the building smaller and is waiting for price estimates to come back.

The Building Committee was originally hoping to get approval for the project at Town Meeting in the spring, go out for bid and start construction in the summer.

“The only way it could start this summer is [if voters approved the $12 million renovation option] because it has fifty percent design work done,” Raymond said. “So that’s our only chance at this point.”