Lee Bartlett, welfare administrator for Epsom, puts out a sign when she’s meeting with a client. It reads, “Please meet with the next available clerk,” and she props it up several feet away from her office and Town Clerk/Tax Collector Dawn Blackwell’s service window. Sometimes it works, and she can meet with a client without Blackwell’s customers overhearing. But she still hasn’t figured out a way to get people in and out of her office, a converted supply closet, without them being seen.

The Epsom Town Offices are housed in a rented building on Black Hall Road. With its lease up in June 2010, the selectmen are exploring ways to bring more of that rental money back into town coffers, and to give officials like Bartlett and Blackwell the space and privacy they need to serve Epsom. Selectman Joanne Randall recently guided a tour of the current facility.

Bartlett works out of a small rectangular room, a former walk-in closet, that also houses her canned food collection.

“This is where the people sit,” she said, gesturing to two metal folding chairs. She has room for a desk and a laptop. She’s steps away from Blackwell’s counter, and her clients can be overheard by anyone paying taxes or licensing dogs. Sometimes she’ll take clients into the conference room, but that depends on other groups not using it, Bartlett said. Most town boards and committees use the room, and, Randall said, “Lee never knows when she’ll need private space.”

The conference room is also “big and intimidating” to clients, Bartlett said, and it contains files for various departments. “Sometimes,” she said, “people need to get at their files.”

Randall’s wish list for a new building includes better quarters for Bartlett and her people. “She needs the space, she needs the privacy, and a separate entrance would be nice,” Randall observed, adding, “It’s hard enough for people to get themselves in here to ask for help.”

The main office space houses selectmen’s secretary Debbie Tibbetts, financial administrator Nancy Wheeler, Barbara Clark, who oversees the property files, and zoning compliance officer Jay Hickey. While there’s enough room for the four professionals, it gets noisy, Wheeler observed, often with four conversations going at once.

Randall pointed out the employees’ lunch table, which is also where she works when she’s on official business. She plugs in her laptop and uses her cell phone -- there is no room for a private office for selectmen. And with a three-person board, if another selectman shows up, it gets tricky: they’re not supposed to hold unposted meetings.

“We could get called on the carpet,” Randall said.

Blackwell’s office is big enough for her and a deputy, but she doesn’t like the full glass window separating her from customers. There are only small openings in the window, and it’s hard to hear or be heard, she said, especially when the matter involves someone’s credit card being rejected or other personal information is given. But they need the glass because climate control is poor, she added.

“Whenever anyone opens the outside door, we freeze,” she said.

The tiny hallway in front of her counter gets clogged when selectmen go into nonpublic session, she added. “Everyone else traipses out here and stands around,” Blackwell said.

Storage is a huge issue, Randall said, opening the door to a small cinderblock room. There are vertical file cabinets, larger horizontal drawers for building plans, and metal shelves full of copy paper and ink cartridges.

“Every file cabinet is full,” Randall said. “ The law requires us to keep records forever.” Historic handwritten town records are neatly piled on top of a file cabinet. They should be in a climate-controlled facility, according to Randall.

“We need secure, safe storage for all our town records,” Wheeler said. “If tax or property records got destroyed by fire or water, there would be some real issues.”

With the lease up next June and the town paying its last obligation on the library bond, Epsom has a “golden opportunity” to buy, build or renovate its own facility, Randall said. The town pays $2,000 a month for the Black Hall Road space, and she and fellow selectmen Bob Blodgett and Keith Cota can easily see that going toward a permanent building. A building committee is currently researching options. Among other things, they’re talking about a possible addition to the historic Meeting House, now part of a complex on Route 4 including the library and the Old Town Hall.

For more information or to help, call the Town Office at 736-9002.