As members of the Harrietstown Town Council cleaned out the town hall attic, they took a break to listen to the music and to grab an aerial view of the town. It’s mostly out of sight of the public, but cleaning this area out has been a task town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach has wanted to do for a while. She’s not sure when it was cleaned last, if ever.

“We’re asking people to invest in the building, we might as well,” she said.

After their town board meeting, councilors walked up flights of stairs to sweep up years of dust, clean up old coffee cups and finally throw away scrap roofing stored in the upper layers of the building.

The attic is an attic. Short, dingy, sparsely lit and a little precarious as portions have no flooring and councilors walked on beams.

Harrietstown Supervisor Jordanna Mallach, right, and Councilwoman Tracey Schrader look over property records from 1989 they found in the attic of the town hall while cleaning it out on Thursday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Mallach has been applying for grants to renovate numerous parts of the building — the roof, the HVAC system. As she’s bringing contractors and architects through the attic to look at the roof, she wants it to look nicer.

The town was recently awarded a $13,600 Preserve New York grant and Mallach said Landmark Consulting has been doing an architectural study of the building. She’s applied for more grants as well.

The town hall was built in 1928 after a fire destroyed the former building.

Harrietstown council members met before their Thursday meeting to start the work. They saw it as part of their duties as elected officials.

“It’s a historic building. Let’s take care of it,” Councilwoman Tracey Schrader said. “It’s like taking care of an elderly relative. Right? You want to give them some love and attention.”

Harrietstown Councilwoman Tracey Schrader shows off a phone she found while cleaning out the attic of the town hall on Thursday. The phone had no cord but Schrader jokingly said "it's connected to another solar system or something." (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Council members filled contractor garbage bags with nails, paper, dust and cans. The attic floors were coated with typical storage space stuff: plastic boat tarps, coffee cans with scrap metal, short lengths of wire, a ServiStar Hardware paper checkout bag, cigarette butts. At some point, this was someone’s smoke break spot.

“Construction debris? It’s right up my alley,” Schrader said. She runs a contracting company with her husband. “Do you know how many bags of stuff I’ve hauled over the years?”

There were also some more interesting items — shiny wooden boards labeled “Plaintiff” and “Defendant” from the courtroom, maps, and a red, white and blue bunting swag.

In one corner of the windowed room there’s a large, haphazardly assembled pile of wooden chairs. They were put on an auction site years ago and nobody bid on them, Mallach said. How they ended up in the attic is a mystery.

“I don’t know how some of it got up there to be totally honest,” Mallach said. “It’s not an easy place to leave things. It’s not like you accidentally (do it.)”

Harrietstown Councilmembers Tracey Schrader and Jeff Denkenberger filled up numerous trash bags while cleaning out the attic of the town hall on Thursday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

In one corner, there are some old ballot boxes — metal cubes with holes for paper ballots stamped with “T O F H” for “Town of Harrietstown. Maybe Historic Saranac Lake or the Saranac Lake Free Library might like them, Mallach mused, “or maybe you could make it a flower pot.”

Tucked away in a nook were paper property records circa 1989 from a dot matrix printer. These records are all digital now, but Mallach brought them down to town Clerk Sabrina Harrison just in case.

Down in the basement board room, the bell chimed out six times, marking the start of the meeting.

“I’m glad we got out of that tower,” Councilman Jeff Denkenberger said.

After the meeting, the council went all the way up the tower to see the bell.

A stack of chairs is piled in the attic of the Harrietstown Town Hall. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Schrader, quite suddenly, asked for the time.

7:56 p.m.

She motioned to the bell.

The message was clear: “We’ve got to get out of here before that thing rings.”

They went back to work sweeping in the belltower. Four minutes later, the bell rang eight times — it’s muffled in the rickety steel staircase just below. It’s much louder outside on the street below.

It was dusty work, but the council members had a lot of fun doing it, craning their heads to look in every nook and cranny, cracking jokes and laughing with excitement as they discovered discarded holiday decorations and municipal ephemera.