Town Council supports $4 million bond for South River Road station

This is my second Town Manager message on the subject of the proposed bonds that will appear on the ballot on March 11, 2014. If you missed my previous message explaining the $30 million road bond, you can find it and background information on both bonds on the Town of Bedford website (www.bedfordnh.org).

The focus of this message is the proposed fire and ambulance substation on South River Road. This is déjà vu, you might think, and you would not be wrong: voters overwhelmingly approved the substation as part of the infrastructure bond in 2011. Unfortunately, the Town did not include enough funding in the 2011 infrastructure bond to cover the full cost of the project, so we will return to the voters for renewed approval in March with the benefit of more information.

While there has been some concern that the Town has rushed to a conclusion on this project, the history of this substation goes back almost 25 years. In 1990, the Town acquired land for fire station on what is now Hawthorne Drive as a condition of approval of a commercial development (the Town later sold the land for Daniel Webster Animal Hospital/Route 3 turning lane expansion). In 1991, the Town Council approved the inclusion of a Route 3 station in the 10-year capital improvement plan at an estimated cost of $1,150,000 (although it does not appear that the project was funded).

Fast forward to the late 1990s/early 2000s, when commercial and residential activity on South River Road experienced significant growth. In addition to existing developments on Ridgewood, the Town saw the arrival of Bedford Hills, Hampshire Green and the Arbors, followed by the Riverwalk condominiums, Bentley Commons, and most recently the Washington Place medical office complex. Town wide, EMS calls for service grew by 40% between 2004 and 2012; in the South River Road catchment area, the number of calls increased by 400% in the same timeframe!

In 2005, the Town Manager studied the need for the substation, which culminated in a recommendation to the Town Council to add emergency personnel and open a substation on South River Road. That conclusion was supported by a 2005 report of the Insurance Services Office (ISO) that highlighted Bedford’s low staffing numbers and long response times, and by a December 2005 study conducted by Municipal Resources, Inc. (MRI) that recommended additional staff to address OSHA and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) codes and standards, which cover both fire and emergency medical response. The MRI report also recommended the construction of a South River substation by 2008, a third ambulance to keep up with emergency call volume, and the renewal of a shared services agreement with New Boston for better coverage for the west side of town (the agreement was signed in 2013).

By 2007, the Town of Bedford had added seven new personnel. In 2010, when the Town Council asked the Town Manager and department heads for a list of critical roads and facilities projects for inclusion in the proposed infrastructure bond, the substation was prominently featured. Ultimately, $1.5 million of the $13.2 million bond approved in 2011 was earmarked for a substation on South River Road that would house the Town’s long-needed third ambulance.

There are three primary points that support the case for a substation on South River Road:

1)     Population Growth: From 2000 to 2010, Bedford grew by about 3000 residents (16% population increase). Almost half of that population growth is in the South River Road catchment area, and the census figures do not include the influx of daytime traffic for work, shopping, medical appointments, and so on.

2)     Call volume: From 2000 to 2010, the number of fire calls town-wide increased by 33% (from 464 to 620 per year), and the number of EMS calls increased by 65% (from 836 to 1376). Following national trends, fire calls have held steady since 2010 but EMS calls continued to climb to 1528 in 2012 and 1706 in 2013 for another 25% increase in three years! Notably, in 2013, 43% of EMS calls went to the South River Road catchment area, which contains only 8% of Bedford’s land mass and 33% of its population.

3)     Response times: Of growing concern to the Fire Department is not only response time to South River Road from its station on Constitution Drive, but response to the remainder of the community when crews have already been dispatched. NFPA Standard 1710 requires that for 90% of calls, the arrival time for the first EMS unit must be within five minutes and within eight minutes for a full alarm fire. A review of our calls over the last two years shows that we met the fire arrival standards 85% of the time but met the EMS standards on only 50% of the calls. The average first ambulance arrival time during this period was 5:47; the average arrival time to Hawthorne Drive from Constitution was over six minutes. Why does this matter? According to the American Heart Association, every minute of ambulance delay reduces the chances of survival by 7-10%; within four to six minutes, brain damage and death could occur. Having personnel and a third ambulance on South River Road would shorten arrival times to 43% of our calls to within four minutes while allowing the main station to improve coverage and response to the remaining 92% of town.

While the crucial objective of this station is to improve response to a growing frequency of EMS/ambulance calls, a fourth argument has been made that given the concentration of valuable commercial real estate in the South River Road corridor, a strategically located fire department is essential for fire protection and response. The Bedford Fire Department responded to two major fires along South River Road in 2013.

When I arrived in September 2012, one of the first orders of business was to engage an architect and land use consultant to prepare a preliminary design and cost estimate of the building and evaluate possible sites. The consultants also reviewed town data on call volume and response times and confirmed the case for a second station and, more importantly, an additional ambulance.

The consultants also led us to another important conclusion: at $1.5 million, we had underestimated the cost of the project. First of all, the market value of property on South River Road is roughly $220-240,000 per acre, so the necessary two-acre minimum would easily approach $500,000. Site development costs, including an emergency traffic signal, lighting, and water and sewer, also approach half a million dollars. A conservative but more realistic design and construction estimate for a 10,000-square-foot station is about $3 million, although we fully believe that construction bids will be lower.

Ultimately, revised estimates of the project including land purchase, site development, and the design, construction, and outfitting of the station approached $4.5 million. In October 2013 (reaffirmed January 8, 2014), the Town Council authorized spending out of the Town’s Land Reserve Fund and the 2011 infrastructure bond to purchase a site while it was still available, and also concluded that the best course of action was to return to the voters for approval of the remaining funds – up to $4 million - for site development and construction.

If approved, as with the road bond, the cost of the debt service will not impact the 2014 budget or tax rate and would first appear in the 2015 budget. A ten-year bond for the station would add about 15 cents to the tax rate, or about $50 a year for the average Bedford residence. To keep operating costs down, the station would be staffed during peak call hours of 7 AM-7 PM (a.k.a. waking and commuting hours). Coverage would be provided by transferring existing personnel from the main station and adding three new firefighters in 2015. The additional annual operating cost (including building maintenance) would be about $250,000 for a partial year of operation in 2015 and $325,000 or so a year thereafter, or about 10 cents on the tax rate. Altogether, the annual impact of a new substation on the average household is less than $10 per month.

The public hearing on the two bonds is scheduled for the Town Council meeting on Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at 7:00 PM. Background information is available at www.bedfordnh.org. Voting on the bonds will take place on March 11, 2014 from 7 AM –7 PM at Bedford High School (check the Town Clerk’s website in mid-February for absentee ballot information). Budgetary Town Meeting will take place on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at 7:00 PM, and all voting must take place in person (no absentee voting per NH state law).