Council Fails to Move Forward with Fire Station Site Selection

By Adam Swift

The next step in the effort to build a new fire station to replace the town’s current, aging facilities remains up in the air.

At Tuesday night’s council meeting, Council President Jim Letterie failed to get a second on a motion asking the council to select a preferred site for a new fire station from between the old middle school on Pauline Street and the town-owned basketball courts on Walden Street.

About 1,100 residents took part in a recent survey asking for their preferred option, with about 55 percent choosing an approximately $41 million option for the old middle school, while the remainder selected the approximately $35.6 million option on Walden Street.

Last year, voters rejected a debt exclusion proposal to build a new fire station next to the current police station at the site of the Wadsworth Building.

Prior to Letterie attempting to move the issue forward Tuesday night, several councilors stated that they preferred the Walden Street location, citing the lower cost and the possibility to use the old middle school for economic development purposes.

“I think we have seen in the past votes that people are concerned about their financial wellbeing, so I think, looking at the difference in costs between these two projects, I think it is prudent to look at the Walden Street station very closely,” said Council Vice President Hannah Belcher. “I also agree that the Pauline Street site could be used for a variety of other things, whether it is some housing and economic stimulus for the town, so I personally am leaning toward the Walden Street site.”

Councilor-at-Large Rob DeMarco said he also preferred the Walden Street site, but said the town needs to have a backup plan in place in case voters once again reject a debt exclusion for a new fire station.

“Have we looked at refurbishing the firehouse if we don’t get the money and what the cost would be?” he asked. “What’s our backup plan if we don’t get the money?”

Town Manager Tony Marino noted that the two current fire stations do not meet OSHA requirements and that there is not room to build on the sites.

However, Precinct 5 Councilor Joseph Aiello stated that the council should not vote on a site selection or debt exclusion vote at this time, citing what he called a lack of hard figures and plans for the firehouse options.

“I think there is a lot of information missing that ought to be made available to the council … but my concern is that we don’t have (comparisons) from other communities of recent construction prices,” he said. “I think that raw data ought to be made available, because in reality, when we go for the debt exclusion, there is no cap, and if these things start spiraling to a higher cost, that is just going to be passed on to the taxpayer, and it is just going to really poison the waters for the next thing downstream.”

Aiello noted that the two recent revenue-raising items on the ballot, the fire station last year and a $4.95 million school override in November, were defeated soundly by voters.

“We don’t why, we are flying blind, we haven’t done any surveys, we haven’t done any focus groups, we don’t know precisely why, and we’re coming back with bigger numbers and say let’s do it all over again,” Aiello said.

Aiello also pointed to the future need for major flood and stormwater mitigation projects in the town.

“I think we should stop this discussion today and have a policy discussion about putting all of our needs together in a basket and thinking about a strategic approach to each one of them and move forward,” he said.

Precinct 2 Councilor John Munson said the council is doing the best it can to solve a lot of problems at once, with many of the needs coming in silos.

Munson said he also believes there needs to be a more strategic approach to addressing financial issues.

“There is no doubt that the fire station is a top, top priority, and I believe it should have been done the previous time,” said Munson. “As of right now, I don’t want to be part of prolonging this process, but at the same time, I do want to make sure we are looking at this as a big picture.”

Letterie said he didn’t agree with Aiello’s assertion that a debt exclusion would give the town a blank check for the cost of a new fire station.

“We don’t believe we have a blank check, this is the same way we just built three schools over the last 25 years, the same exact way,” said Letterie. “We have a rendering here as we did a year ago. I think that we did get questions and feedback that we got was that upwards of 80 percent of the people in Winthrop feel that there is a need for a firehouse.

“From information that we got back there were two major problems with the first proposal, one was the location and two was the acquisition cost,” Letterie continued. “You could be wrong, you are never going to get a 100 percent answer, but that is what we felt were the reasons.”

Letterie said he was disappointed that there was no second to move forward with the firehouse site selection at Tuesday night’s meeting.

“This is an issue that has been discussed in town now for over 30 years, and the condition of our firehouses are absolutely, incredibly deplorable, they don’t even meet OSHA standards,” said Letterie. “We put the safety and security of not only our firefighters, but our town in jeopardy but not even allowing the citizens to decide on whether we should build a new fire station. Councilors have known about this for several months, they have seen the plans, they have seen the numbers – the numbers don’t lie.”