Article 16 – Police Station Construction Should Be Amended, Article 22 Withdrawn

There appears to be much agreement in town that we need a new police station.  The challenge continues to be how to get the needed approval to start construction.  This challenge appears to come more from the mishandling of the process, rather than specific opposition to the concept of a new station. Andy MacEntee has been stubbornly trying to get answers and hold the town accountable for their own by-laws.  The result of all this friction is that the town should amend article 16, the police station construction project, to just include the design funds to get the project started.  In addition, the town should withdraw article 22, capital planning by-law changes, from consideration until further public discussion can take place.

Why amend?  Perhaps the town can get the police station through town meeting as is. But there appears to be a few major sticking points to get passage.  How many people agree with these issues is always tough to tell.

First, there is the apparent disregard by the town for the capital planning by-law that requires all projects be presented before the CIPC (Capital Improvement Planning Committee) by October 1.  This makes some amount of sense so that as taxpayers, we have a good idea of what the future looks like for capital projects.   From the CIPC, we should have a good idea of all the capital projects on the horizon including Town Hall, the sewers, roofs etc so we can make tradeoffs on which one is most urgent.

Second there is the bizarre interpretation of the by-law by town council that CIPC is not for buildings, hence the October 1^st deadline doesn’t apply.   This is rather odd given it has been used for building construction in the past.  However, given our town government also provided us an opinion that the BOS is not required to get RFP for legal services every three years as required by our town counsel by-law, perhaps we should not be surprised.

Next at the BOS meeting last Tuesday, we learned from Selectman Drobinski that the by-law didn’t apply since the building of a police station was not “anticipated”. The by-law requires only projects that are anticipated be placed before the CIPC.  However,  Andy MacEntee found meeting minutes from the Permanent Building Committee in October where the new police station was discussed. In addition, the police station has been discussed for several years, it would be a surprise that it would not be one of the top capital projects that required funding.

At this same BOS meeting, we learned that the CIPC also has many vacancies on the committee. We learned that those vacancies were not filled since the town is proposing to gut the capital planning process with a new by-law all together, article 22.  The town manager was aware of the vacancies, couldn’t find anyone to fill them through word of mouth, but also never advertised the openings.  The changes requested to the capital planning by-law received little public comment time, and is being portrayed as a minor change to a by-law. That is not the case. Article 22 should be defeated in addition to amending article 16.

Even if you are willing to overlook the by-law issues, it becomes difficult to overlook the costs.  The police station as proposed costs $508/sq ft. Some research some residents completed shows the most expensive police stations in New York cost $321/sq ft and stations in Boston cost $285.

Perhaps the high cost is due to the fact that the town is asking for station funding without first getting a design study complete. Hence the cost estimate is not based on any detailed engineering plan, but rather an estimate. Wayland, for comparison, built their 30,000 sq ft (twice our building size) public safety building for police and the fire department for $5.8M (http://colantonioinc.com/project/wayland-public-safety-building) in 2003 (adjusted for inflation, $7.2M).  While I am sure much of their building is garage space for the fire department, it is still meaningful they were able to build a structure for both their departments for the same amount of money we require for just one.  Plamer, MA is another example. For $7.4M they are proposing to build a 22,000 sq ft facility. Littleton, MA provides the closest station form a cost perspective. They completed a 14,000 Sq ft facility in 2008 for what would be $6.59M in today’s dollars. Of course the town is asking for authorization to spend the money. If construction bids came in less that authorized amount, theoretically, the bond would not be issued to the full amount.

Fourth, if we build the new station, the property on route 20 is vacant and could be sold.  But there is no plan right now on what to do with this property. The money from the proceeds, if we were to sell it, has to be spent on additional capital projects, which is good. But does this money have to spent with town meeting approval or does it go to a general capital fund that can be spent at will? Some measure of commitment on what to do with the property would seem to part of the proposal to voters.

The reduction in the town’s debt obligations due to retirement of the school construction debt is rather steep over the coming years. This means that taxpayers will actually see a reduction in the debt service portion of their tax bill.  Much of the urgency to build new capital projects appears to be driven by maintaining this debt service amount so new projects can be proposed “without increasing taxes.” But this is a false argument.  If we don’t pass the project my tax bill will be lower next year than if we do pass the project. There is no free money to build.

So with all these issues, the more prudent approach seems to be to simply fund the $600K design study with direction that the cost / sq.ft for the station needs to be well within the range of neighboring towns and national averages.  Then next year at town meeting,  we can vote, assuming the design work is done and within an allowable cost/sq ft, and the disposition of the route 20 station is determined,  on the final plans .

The town needs a new police station. Jim Kelly has been working hard to get passage showing up at many town events handing out cards and information. But the process we are going through is not the correct one. It is also tainted by some of the recent mishaps where the appearance is created of a lose budget. This includes the $1M in GIC saving reshuffling at last year’s town meeting and the lack of an RFP for legal services for the past 12 years.  Amending article 16 for a design study only removes many of these objections and hopefully gets us on a path to a new station.