Jim Thorpe Borough Council took the next step Thursday toward moving its police department and borough offices into Memorial Hall.

By a 4-2 vote, council passed a resolution to proceed with a plan to relocate its office staff to a portion of the hall’s top floor, reducing the capacity for weddings, banquets and other events from around 600 people to a maximum 250 people, according to a feasibility study completed by Spillman Farmer Architects.

The police department would move into the bottom of the hall, which for many years was used as a roller skating rink.

Greg Strubinger, Thomas Highland, Kyle Sheckler and Joanne Klitsch voted for the resolution, while Edith Lukasevich and Jay Miller dissented. John McGuire was absent.

Both the borough staff and police department currently share a 10-year-old building just across the parking lot from Memorial Hall.

“We’ve got a long way to go, but this gets us moving,” Strubinger said of the divided vote.

According to Strubinger, the borough will look to lease the vacated office building.

“When that was built, I was not in favor of it because it was not properly designed for what the borough needed,” Strubinger said of the current office building.

Miller said he favors moving the police department into the basement of Memorial Hall, but would like to see the borough’s office staff stay where it is.

“It’s an existing building and I don’t see why we can’t continue to use it,” he said. “I don’t know why we should go into the rental business. I can’t make a logical decision tonight without more information.”

In its last full operating year, 2016, Memorial Hall was seemingly blossoming under the management of Jim and Sherry McHugh.

Strubinger, however, argued that too many nonprofits were being shut out because they couldn’t afford to pay what was being asked.

“I think we can get those entities back here and have a more community-minded building once again,” Strubinger said.

With the McHughs in attendance Thursday, Lukasevich heaped praise on the couple, noting how she felt they pumped life back in to the building.

“They were bringing this place back,” she said. “I can’t understand why it couldn’t continue with them running this place. You can’t pay all the past bills overnight. They deserve to be in here.”

Sherry McHugh warned council that cutting the event space on the top floor can’t be undone, and expressed concern about losing the facility as a possible emergency shelter.

“The people are making their opinions known,” McHugh said. “If you truly cared what people thought, you would put this on a ballot.”

In December, McHugh presented a petition she said was signed by between 400 and 500 residents against moving the offices to Memorial Hall.

“This is not something we just decided to do,” Klitsch said of moving office staff to Memorial Hall. “We have looked time and time again at what do we do with this building? Nobody has stepped forward and said here is how you can do it. If we don’t do something now, we’ll still be spending money and there will be nothing here.”

Council also passed resolutions Thursday to move forward with demolishing its current public works garage, also located at Memorial Park, and build a new one on property the borough owns across from the water department on West Broadway; and look at financing for all of its projects.

Cost estimates provided by Spillman Farmer include $1.5 million for the new public works garage, $650,000 to relocate the borough office to Memorial Hall, $1.5 million to relocate the police department to Memorial Hall, $75,000 to renovate Memorial Hall, $250,000 for site improvements and $50,000 to demolish the old public works garage.