Center funding goes to vote

Special Town Meeting is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. tomorrow in Andover High School. Among the articles on the warrant is a request to appropriate $2 million from the operating budget to help fund construction of a youth center behind Doherty Middle School on Bartlet Street. The article received favorable, although not unanimous, recommendations from the Board of Selectmen and the Finance and School committees. The Andover Youth Foundation, whose organizers gathered enough signatures to call the Special Town Meeting, has committed at least $2.2 million toward the project. Foundation officials originally planned to fund the center entirely with private donations, but were forced to scrap those plans after the state concluded that building a facility on publicly owned land could not be considered a private project. - Katheleen Conti