With the Everett Educational Center in disrepair, the School Department has consolidated its offices and moved to the Multi-Service Center, and the Council on Aging has moved downstairs in the building.

The shuffle of offices has forced the town to look at how it was using the space in the Multi-Service Center, which first functioned as a high school and then as a middle school, before closing in the early 1990s. The building was rehabbed, and reopened to house town offices in 1997.

The Everett Educational Center, which housed the offices of Curriculum and Instruction and Student Services, was shuttered earlier this summer due to problems with the roof and other maintenance issues. The historic building on Gibbs Avenue, next to the Congregational Church hall, was the town's first high school and has seen been used for a variety of other purposes.

The School Department approached the town about moving those offices to the Multi-Service Center, along with the superintendent's and business offices from Town Hall, and the School Department's technology office. Those offices will occupy the second and third floors of the Multi-Service Center.

As a result, services for seniors — the Council on Aging and Senior Day Care — have been moved almost completely downstairs in the Multi-Service Center, which Town Administrator Derek Sullivan says he hopes will benefit seniors in the long run.

"The Council on Aging and Senior Day Care have always been on two separate floors," said Sullivan. "It was sort of incomprehensible that there wasn't a joint effort between the two departments, and putting them together made sense.”

The seniors will still share one of the larger rooms on the second floor, which is currently used for municipal meetings and seniors' card games, as well as another room for exercise.

The seniors will also continue to use what is affectionately referred to as the "mug and muffin room" on the second floor, which features a kitchen and small eating area — and almost always smells like fresh baked goods.

All offices and other services — the Visiting Nurse and SHINE program — are now downstairs, which is where lunch is served, BINGO games are hosted, movies are shown, and pool is played, among other activities.

The move also had an unintended, but positive, consequence.

When a company was called in to move the pool table from what is now office space to another room on the first floor, workers found that the table was falling apart.

"They came in to move it and it was held together by wire and twist ties," said Sullivan, noting that the felt on the top of the table was also ripped.

Moving the table would cost $900, but the company offered instead to bring a better, albeit used, table for a total of $1,200.

Sullivan took the company up on its offer and, instead of charging the extra money to the Council on Aging's expense budget, paid it out of his own office's expenses, as a token of his appreciation for what he acknowledged has been a bit of a stressful move for the Council on Aging and Senior Day Care.

Barbara M. Russell, the Senior Day Care program's pool champion for 2011, was excited about the new table.

"My boyfriend taught me how to play," Russell said, noting that the couple spent 40 years together before he passed away last year. "We used to play every night after supper."

Russell, who previously spent more than eight years working for the department and now stops by three days per week, said she can't wait for the next tournament.

"This is my second home," she said.

The Multi-Service Center, which also house Veterans' Services and the Harbormaster Department, is located at 48 Marion Road, across the parking lot from Town Hall.