Members of the Long Term Building Committee will host a public walk-through of the old high school Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., as they continue to close in on a plan for what the town should do with the building in the coming years.

Members seemed to agree at a meeting last week that they prefer to keep the building for municipal and school office use, shutting down the costly to maintain town hall, annex and council on aging buildings and moving all town offices to the school. However, there was some disagreement over how long that could take, when it could begin and how costly that would be.

A good portion of that uncertainty stems from whether costly code upgrades would be mandated if the state determines that changing the school’s current use would trigger Chapter 34 building code improvements, which among other things deal with the change of a building’s use.

Manny Soares, a select board member who serves on the committee, said he has spoken to several code consultants and building officials in Fall River, and “I don’t think it’s going to trigger anything to start moving town offices down there. But again, we can hire a consultant to tell us that.”

Several other speakers disagreed.

Hank Keating, a six-year resident of town who builds affordable housing in the northeast, said he has been dealing with “these kind of re-use issues my whole career.”

“In a very big sense I’d agree, this is an asset that the town should keep. I think, however, that consolidating all of these town activities into that building and trying to convince yourselves that it’s not a change of use from education, you’re deceiving yourselves,” he said. “It’s going to be classified as a change of use in my experience, and that’s going to bring all of these code upgrades.”

To address that uncertainty, Soares suggested, and town administrator James Hartnett agreed, to contact a consultant involved in a previously town-funded review of the building to appear before the board at its next meeting, if possible, and go over potential code changes that could be triggered by moving town offices.

Chairman Christopher Thrasher — who replaces former chairman Mark Schmid, who resigned following the previous meeting — said he will reach out to the heads of various town departments and ask what they see as their future in the school.

Thomas Aubin, the school superintendent, will also be contacted as members want to know what the department’s projections of school enrollment in the coming years are.

If the school department anticipates needing substantial new classroom space in the coming years, members said, they want to know that before heading down another path..

“With all due respect, Manny, I think you’re about steps ahead of where we need to be,” board member John Perry said. “The first (thing to do is) talk to the superintendent about whether we’re going to need additional school rooms in the next five to 10 years. Until we know the answer to that, we shouldn’t talk about doing anything about that building.”

“If we move it to offices now and then determine that we need (space) for schools later, then we are definitely changing the use. So we shouldn’t jump into offices right away until we know what the schools are doing.”

Regardless of whether there will be additional code-related costs involved when town offices move in, Hartnett said it’s going to be important to do it right.”

“Thirty, 40 years ago we could move our desks into the old school and get away with it,” said Hartnett. “We can’t do that anymore. There’s too much liability, there’s just too many issues out there ... we need to go through the steps. Listen, I’m not against moving into the building, i just want to make sure” it’s done right.