Montville — Repairs to a 168 year-old church in the historic center of town were paused after the town fired the contractor it hired to complete them, but town officials hope an infusion of funding from the town's contingency fund will get the project going again.

The town-owned Montville Center Congregational Church has stood at the corner of Meetinghouse Lane and Raymond Hill Road since 1847, and was accepted to the state Register of Historic Places in 2012.

Before the town acquired the vacant building in May 2011, the church's roof leaked and other parts of the building had fallen into disrepair.

The town's public works department and historical society did some of the needed maintenance, and in 2014 the town paid $20,000 for a new roof on the building.

Last year, it hired J.N. Fogg Jr. Enterprises to paint the exterior, seal the church's windows and replace some of the clapboard siding for about $38,000.

But the contractor was unable to complete the project after finishing only about 80 percent of the painting work, and the contract was terminated, according to Town Planner Marcia Vlaun.

On Monday, the Town Council approved a transfer of  $31,455 from the town's contingency fund to pay for some of the smaller remaining repairs — new gutters and spouts and the rest of the painting, for example — slowly pushing the project toward the ultimate goal of opening it for town events, Vlaun said.

The Council also approved a request from Vlaun to waive the bid process and directly hire firms to do some of the remaining repairs and replace the church's doors.

"I don't want to go out to bid for gutters and drain spouts, it's going to cost me a fortune," Vlaun said Monday.

The town has avoided applying for state grants to pay for restoring the church because the process require the town to adhere to strict preservation standards, costing too much, Vlaun said.

Some of the damage to the church was worsened by amateur attempts to fix the building before and after it was left vacant, she told the Council Monday.

"There was a lot of good-intentioned work done on the building, but it wasn't helpful in the long run," she said.

The paint job and repairs to the building's sills and windows will likely stop any additional damage to the church, Vlaun said.

"The goal here is to preserve the building, and we will," she said.

But the building needs interior repairs — including a fix for the partially collapsed ceiling — before it can be used, Vlaun said.

"The inside is a whole different story," she said.

m.shanahan@theday.com