Days after walking the halls of the old high school, members of the select board agreed Monday that Westport needs more information to help determine the feasible of renovating the building and moving any or all of the town’s other municipal offices there.

Such a move could cost $29 million. It could cost $50 million — nobody knows yet. But that’s the point, several members said, as they agreed to the study after having commissioned or drafted at least four others over the past several years.

“We’ve been studying this for a long time,” board member Richard Brewer said. “We shouldn’t be studying this forever. But in my view, we really haven’t answered the question, ‘Is this really a good idea in the first place?’ I’m just saying, ‘I don’t know.’”

Hopefully, members said, the plan — to have town manager James Hartnett draft up specs for an RFP to commission a wide-ranging study into the specific costs of relocating town offices — will finally yield actionable fruit that can be presented to voters at a later date.

While the town has several previous studies in its back pocket, none of them tightly fit most officials’ current hope for the building, which is to move Westport’s other municipal offices at Town Hall and the Annex there. Such a move could involve costly upgrades mandated by the state building code, as well as other currently unforeseen costs including insurance, and members said it’s crucial to know what those costs are before they proceed down any path.

The money for the study has already been approved and is sitting unspent in a town account after $200,000 was approved by voters at last year’s Town Meeting.

Christopher Thrasher, chairman of the Long Term Building Reuse Committee, agreed that there is not enough information yet to go one way or another, but cautioned that while the town needs more study, it needs to be focused specifically on the town’s needs:

“Some people say the building is dilapidated and we should sell it for scrap and call it a day,” he said. “Some people say we can go and move in tonight. Obviously the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

“If you do another feasibility study with a very specific one time scenario and that’s it, you’re going to waste another year,” he said. “It needs to be a holistic overall feasibility study that includes not just (the old high school) but all town buildings as well.”

Not all are in favor of more study, or the hiring of a project manager, and that drew some back and forth from board members. Manuel Soares said he already knows what he needs to know, and believes the town could start moving in now, taking a phased approach by relocating one office in at a time, starting with those in the Annex.

“We’re talking very minor (costs) to move the Annex down there,” he said.

“Prove it!” chairwoman Shana Teas said.

“It’s not my job to prove it,” Soares replied. “I’m telling you what my constituents are telling me. I don’t know why we want to keep spending that $200,000. We’ve studied it to death. We can ask Ralph (Souza, the town’s building official) if we can move in.”

But some members, including Brewer, cautioned that jumping to quickly could end up biting the town in the long run:

“It’s like chess,” he said. “You start moving the annex (offices), that’s going to have a domino effect. Other things are going to follow that. You may regret that later on because that wasn’t the right move, had you known that at the time. I want someone who’s an expert in that area to say, ‘This is what you’re undertaking and these are the ramifications of it.”

“I don’t have an agenda,” Brewer said. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Therefore I want to have a feasibility study (saying if) you take on a project like this, this is what it means to the town, here are the moving parts.”

Said Thrasher: “I’m for whatever brings action.”

Hartnett is expected to work on an RFP and report back to the board at the next meeting, or shortly thereafter.