An Educated Consumer's $8 Million

I am one of the petitioners who spoke to, listened to and gathered signatures from local citizens to put this issue onto a town wide vote. Only 168 voters at town meeting chose to spend eight million dollars (or more…) of discretionary funds. I believe it’s best for the community, if all voters have the time to debate, become more educated, and have an opportunity to participate in voting on this important issue, no matter which side of this issue they’re on.

I did my research on the history of the public safety building and how we, the taxpayers, are debating an eight million dollar upgrade to a 14-year-old renovation. In fact, I wrote the first letter on this subject to the Daily Item Forum before the town meeting.

When a building is gutted and rebuilt, like the current police station was in 2004, the clock starts at the completed rehabilitation date, not when a particular structure was originally built (1900, 1950, 2004 and a proposed 2021).

Here are a few points I brought up at town meeting when Article 8 was being debated.

• We went from a 55 million dollar budget to run this town in 2004, the year the public safety building opened, to a 95 million dollar budget this current year.
• In the very near future, we are looking at funding not only a new high school but we are obligated to fund the new vocational school. The vocational school has already been approved. In addition, the DPW has requested a new building or upgrades and the Greenwood Elementary School is long past its shelf-life.
• I am not opposed to doing upgrades to the public safety building, but I am opposed to altering the structural footprint for a variety of reasons.
• As I stated at town meeting, the town needs to come back at a future date with another solution. In the meantime, most of the issues addressed in Article 8 can be remedied from the tax levy capital outlay account. We just voted for nearly two million dollars for maintenance and upgrades to our town’s buildings and properties.

The main problem I have with Article 8 is with saying that the eight million dollar price tag is not going to increase our taxes, and that this cost is within the parameters of proposition 2 ½. This is not only false, but in my opinion, it’s fake news. Of course it’s our tax dollars, which are extracted from our tax bills. If Wakefield has eight million dollars in its budget to fund this project, some taxpayers like myself may say, “We want a break to the tune of eight million dollars on our ever-increasing tax bills.” Or maybe we could shift the money to subsidize some of the out-of-pocket costs that parents of school-aged children are faced with.

I will definitely be voting no on Article 8. However, like others I have spoken to, I would like to see Wakefield fund a one-time fix to relocate the dispatch desk to the first-floor lobby of the public safety building, where it should have been located in the first place. By completing this project, space will become available on the second floor to address some of the concerns brought up at the town meeting.

Perhaps in the future, other issues in the public safety building can be addressed. I have no problem with the town having spent money on a feasibility study and a town wide election. After all, it’s our eight million dollars which, by the way, is what it cost us to build a six million dollar fire house and to reconstruct the current police station, which cost approximately two million dollars. These projects took two years to complete and we will continue paying on that eight million dollar bond until 2023.

Because of Article 8, I have learned more about our first responders in the past few weeks than I had ever known since moving to Wakefield in 1975. They are very dedicated and an extremely valuable asset to our town. Although I will be voting no on Article 8, I will be the first one in line to support a more fiscally responsible solution.

Bob McLaughlin