THURMONT, Md. – Though repeatedly told getting a signed lease for the senior center from the town wasn’t a high priority for the Thurmont Senior Center Board of Directors, the Thurmont Senior Commission spent much of its first meeting for the new year talking about why it should be a high priority.

“We’ve been waiting, what, three years for a lease?” member Barbara Smith asked.

Thurmont town commissioner and liason to the commission Bob Lookingbill said he had heard the lease wasn’t a “front burner issue,” but then he added “We need to try to find out why there is no lease and there should be.”

According to Thurmont Mayor Martin Burns, the reason there is no current lease is that when the previous lease expired, the town was still uncertain as to the future of the building for various reasons. Instead the town and Thurmont Senior Center Board continued operating under the expired lease.

Sylvia Goodenough, a member of the senior center board of directors, was in the audience at the Jan. 7 meeting of the commission. She told the senior commission, “We don’t like shaking up the troops when we’re 100 percent confident they won’t kick us out.”

Commission member Carole Hutson disagreed, saying that a signed lease is what should give the seniors a sense of security. Chairman Wilbur Buehrer added that a lease would list who had responsibility for what.

“We’re relaxed about it because whatever they’ve got in their minds to do is for the welfare of us and not the opposite,” Goodenough said.

The senior commissioners told Goodenough that the senior center board of directors needed to ask for a lease and asked that the issue be brought up to the board.

“I get the feeling we can get this done in a couple weeks,” Lookingbill said. “Don’t hold back because you think it’s asking for too much. Put it out there and if we can afford it, we’ll do it for you.”

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