The town of Pomfret’s office move seems all but finalized. Town officials seem pleased by the much larger space the new office provides, and I’m sure any fishermen on staff will be pleased with the creek access behind the building. But there’s reason to be concerned by the move for any residents.

For instance, it seems to be being downplayed by all parties that Pomfret Town Hall will no longer be in Pomfret.

When I had heard there was a plan to move the hall, I had assumed the new location would be better centrally located in Pomfret to better serve our community as the current hall is in the far-north of the town limits. Instead of this, town officials have opted to move north of the town into West Dunkirk, making the town services inaccessible to pedestrian traffic in Fredonia.

Pomfret is also now sacrificing a physical bond with Fredonia Village offices, its neighbor on Barker Commons, a sister government body it engages with often.

Leaving Fredonia has a non-quantifiable downside as well. There’s an inexplicable quality of co-existence when the town offices are well-integrated into the village proper; it conveys the sense of civic stability and service to the community that local government strives for.

The advantage of small-town living is, ideally, a smaller scale of life that incentivizes citizens to drive less and engage in the community more. Public services sitting neatly along Barker Commons– library, town hall, post office, village hall, police station– all add to a centrality to Fredonia that other villages throughout the county lack. I believe Fredonia is special for this reason and others, and that specialness is worth defending. I have even read of chatter that the village of Fredonia may want to leave its location at the Opera House. A very sad idea indeed.

Fredonia and Pomfret, like most rural communities in America, suffer from a slow drain of services and business from our small-town centers, and it can be seen as a sad sign that the Pomfret Town Hall sees leaving its own township an attractive option. If it were up to a public vote, I would have elected to keep our town hall in-town.

To put it as a question: if we can’t even keep our own Town Hall local, what does that say about our community?

Chuck Carroll is a Fredonia resident.