NEWPORT — The Newport School District will keep its bus garage, but when it can obtain a building permit for a new natural science center at the Sugar River Valley Technical Center remains uncertain.

Those were the two main issues discussed at a Newport Selectboard meeting Monday night, where town and school officials called for an end to the discord between the School Board and Selectboard.

“We are the Sunshine Town, not the shouting and hollering town,” Selectboard Chairman Barry Connell said. “We need to be working as a community.”

School Board Chairman Steve Morse concurred.

“We need to be a team. We can’t operate separately,” Morse said.

In a 4-1 vote, the Selectboard rescinded a June 8 letter to the School Board which said the approval at Town Meeting of a petitioned article allowing the school district to lease the bus garage at the public works department for 99 years for $1 was “ineffective” and not enforceable and the district must vacate the building by June 30.

Monday’s vote came after a lengthy debate among School Board and Selectboard members and the public over the months-long dispute about the bus garage.

Last fall, the School Board said it would use the annual lease payment on the garage to make repairs to the facility.

That decision set in motion a series of actions, with the Selectboard telling the district that it was being evicted for refusal to pay rent. When the town said it would not reconsider, even after the School Board said it would pay the rent, the petitioned article was submitted and approved, 701-140. Town officials have said they want to use the space in the garage for the town’s needs, including storing an ambulance.

Resident Ed Karr, who said he was tired of the bickering between boards that the public can’t understand, pointed out that the Selectboard never objected to the article before the vote, then decided to hire an attorney at town expense because it didn’t like the outcome.

“You people are not listening to us,” Karr said. “We are not being heard. It is a done deal. We spoke.”

Selectboard Vice Chairman Jim Burroughs moved to uphold the May 9 Town Meeting vote and also work with the school district on a lease and other issues. Board member Jeff Kessler voted no.

Kessler criticized the school district for not being willing to discuss proposals from the town to construct a pole barn for the buses and allow the town’s mechanic to service the buses.

School Board Chairman Steve Morse said the district would make improvements to the bus garage and also pay heat and electricity bills.

The meeting was characterized by calls for a better working relationship between the boards but also by accusations about who was at fault for the bus barn fiasco.

“We need to stop this constant disruption of your ability to work and our ability to work,” Connell said at the start of the three-hour meeting.

Connell said he was still bothered by the terms of the lease but reiterated that the bays will be for the buses.

The town said it has a legal opinion stating the article was “unenforceable,” and several people at Monday’s meeting called for that opinion to be released.

“Put it on the town website and I will take it to the Secretary of State,” resident Tom Gallagher said.

Resident Kathryn Boutin said, “If you are going to use that opinion to ignore the voters, we better see it.”

In response, Connell said the opinion was not released because if the town went to litigation, “that is our case.”

The boards also are at odds over the school district’s plans to build a new natural science center as part of a $15.4 million renovation of the Sugar River Valley Technical Center. The district said it has to break ground on construction of the center, next to the high school parking lot, soon or there will be additional costs for the project since it will not be completed on schedule.

SAU 43 Superintendent Donna Magoon said Tuesday that Planning and Zoning Administrator Christina Donovan called the school district last week and told it to “cease and desist” work on phase one of the project because a building permit had not been issued.

On Tuesday, Magoon and SAU 43 Business Administrator Ed Emond, said they had a permit and continued work. The district also has a permit for phase two and Magoon said it will file for a permit for phase three, construction of the center, on Wednesday.

At the Monday meeting, Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg said he was not aware of the cease-and-desist order but promised to look into it. Phone calls to the Planning and Zoning Department on Tuesday were not answered.

The school district and town learned a few months ago that the site for the center was given to the town in the 1970s as part of a larger parcel to be used solely for recreation. If it is taken out of recreation, a parcel, similar in size, value and function that has not been used previously for recreation, must replace it. The school district said it does not have any available property and is relying on the town to find a suitable parcel.

The town suggested land around a new town well being developed in North Newport, but Rieseberg said on two occasions the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services has declined to approve the plans for a recreational field with adjacent parking on the wellhead protection area. Engineers are continuing to study ways to satisfy the DES while creating sufficient parking, Rieseberg said at Monday’s meeting.

Rieseberg said after the meeting he did not know if finding a suitable replacement parcel was required before construction on the center could begin.

Magoon said she was told by the state the issue should not hold up construction and suggested that state officials overseeing the land issue come to Newport and meet with both boards to explain the state’s position.

“We don’t know what is fact or fiction,” Magoon said Monday night.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.