ROYALSTON – Local officials met with state Sen. Jo Comerford, state Rep. Susannah Whipps and Director of Rural Affairs Anne Gobi to discuss funding for several priority projects in town.

In addition to all three members of the town’s Selectboard, representatives of the Planning Board, Energy Committee, Building Committee, Department of Public Works and Fire Department were in attendance.

Selectboard Chair Deb D’Amico began by telling state officials that the town is waiting to hear the status of National Grid being able to accept election off of solar arrays. The town intends to construct arrays on top of the old landfill on Town Dump Road and wastewater treatment plant and is looking into installing electric vehicle charging stations.

“Specifically, in this town we have an agreement with Verogy to construct a solar array on town-owned land; we signed it ages ago but it has stalled,” D’Amico said at the Tuesday meeting. “And what we’re hearing is it’s because of National Grid.”

Building Committee Chair Jim Barclay added the town has been moving all forms of heat from fossil fuel to electrical, which has been proving a challenge from a cost perspective.

“The state has massive plans for solar, but you’re not going to build (big arrays) in Boston; it’s Royalston and Peru and Florida and Goshen – that’s where that’s going to occur,” Barclay said. “But if private companies…are not building the infrastructure, we’re stuck. There’s not a thing we can do about it. Little towns of 1,200 can’t do this. There needs to be a plan that we can fit into.”

Comerford said the town needs to put together a one-pager detailing plans for the solar array, the reasons town officials are being given for the delays in moving ahead with the project, and forwarding that information to the state Office of Economic Development.

“Tell them what you’re doing, the people you’re talking to, tell them exactly what the town wants,” she said, adding that it would help her, Whipps, and Gobi push for state assistance.

Building Committee member Tom Musco then raised the issue of the Raymond School, which the town has been trying to convert into municipal office space for many years, already investing approximately $250,0000 into the project.

“We put a new roof on it, so it’s weather-tight,” he said. “We stripped out all the old plumbing and wiring.”

Despite the investment, however, the town is still some $3 million short of what it needs to fully renovate the building.

“$3 million might as well be $3 trillion,” Barclay interjected. “It’s a meaningless number. We didn’t have it yesterday, and we’re not going to have it tomorrow. But if we don’t do something we’ve wasted $250,000.”

The town is under pressure to find new office space – whether it’s at the former Raymond School or elsewhere – because the Whitney Building, which currently houses most town offices, is itself dilapidated and in serious need of rehabilitation.

“We have this urgent need to move people out of basically an unhealthy building. And, parenthetically, we have hired – with grant money – a company to come and do a marketing feasibility study on this old building housing the offices,” said D’Amico. “We need to move those people out of that building. Is there any place we can go in the next year, year and a half, to get the money we need? What do we do?”

Gobi’s response was frank: “To think you’re going to be somewhere in the next couple of years, that’s not happening.”

D’Amico then offered a frank assessment of her own, that the town needs to do some soul-searching about where it wants to be in the next five or 10 years.

“We have to start strategically planning, or this town is in trouble,” D’Amico said. “We’re one of these small towns that aren’t really looking ahead and saying, ‘What do we need to do to keep us viable?’ We’re going to start to fade away, and no one wants that to happen.”

Gobi, Whipps, and Comerford all committed to do their best to look for ways to help Royalston move ahead with these and other projects. While admitting the effort will be a heavy lift, each urged town officials to improve communications with their representatives in the state in order to improve the chances of securing funding.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.