BERNARDSTON — With a special town meeting on the horizon, Frank “Bud” Foster wants the town to reconsider using his 12 Church St. lot for a new fire station.
The main purpose of Oct. 25’s special town meeting is for residents to vote on the Fire Station Expansion Committee’s proposal to build a new station at 23 Kringle Drive. Voters will be asked to approve a total borrowing measure of $2.6 million, which includes $585,000 in lot acquisition costs.
However, the high-dollar proposal has faced resistance from some residents, including Foster, who feels he has a better alternative.
Foster, who lives in town part time, confirmed he’s donating his property at 12 Church St., where Foster rents space to two families. Though Foster said previously he’d be willing to donate the property if the Fire Department needed it, he plans to formally offer it through a letter that will be read at the meeting.
Fire Chief Peter Shedd said Foster “has always been a good friend and strong supporter of the Fire Department.” Foster, he said, donated land for the current station’s construction in the early 1970s, and another strip of lawn approximately 50 feet wide and 150 to 200 feet long last year.
That is not to say, though, that the Fire Station Expansion Committee had not previously considered using Foster’s property for the site of a new station. An initial plan involved purchasing the 1.28-acre 1 Brattleboro Road lot (which had an asking price of $178,500, after factoring in closing costs) and combining it with Foster’s adjacent lot.
However, the plan hit a snag when Brattleboro engineering and architecture firm Stevens & Associates brought back figures showing that building at 1 Brattleboro Road and 12 Church St. would only save the town $68,000 compared to their estimated $3,801,000 cost to build at Kringle Drive.
Shedd said building in the historic district, where the current station is, “drives up prices and limits the type of building you can make.”
“That’s one of the reasons we were looking to get away from that lot and avoid those extra costs,” he explained.
After hearing the large numbers, the committee sought help from Morton Buildings, a construction company out of Westfield, which would require $1.8 million for building just the outer shell of a 7,290-square-foot metal building at Kringle Drive. Electrical, heating and plumbing work would be negotiated with other contractors, and the figure doesn’t include site work or land acquisition.
Figures based on those received from Morton Buildings are what the committee is bringing to town meeting. However, Foster believes the committee should reconsider.
“The result of this unnecessary land purchase will be thousands of dollars in new taxes of the term for each and every homeowner in Bernardston, which is unacceptable to me,” Foster wrote in his letter. “This will have a huge negative financial impact on my friends, my family and the community.”
When considering the 12 Church St. lot previously, the committee faced criticism from residents who were concerned about displacing the two families that rent from Foster.
“It is very important that they be able to stay in their home,” Bernardston resident Sharon Sharry wrote previously in a letter to the committee. “I am happy to pay more for a new site that is located anywhere else.”
Two of the tenants, Fran Petrin and her partner Sherwood “Skip” Lenois, came before the committee to say they’d be reluctant to move, but supportive.
“I didn’t rent it to either one of them for life,” Foster explained, claiming his upstairs tenants are looking for a new residence. “They’ve known for two years I’m willing to give it away.”
Because of the smaller property size and wetlands, Shedd said if the town were to use Foster’s lot, combined with 1 Brattleboro Road, the committee would have to reconsider the building’s design. Shedd said a station would need to be less than 6,000 square feet to fit on the two properties.
“This would be anything but fancy,” Foster clarified. In his letter, he wrote, “It may not be perfect, or even the most convenient solution, but it is the only solution that makes financial sense.”
The Selectboard signed the meeting warrant Wednesday, though it does not recommend passing either of the articles involving borrowing $585,000 for the Kringle Drive land purchase or the more than $2 million borrowing measure for construction. The Finance Committee also does not recommend the land borrowing measure, and is making no recommendation on the construction borrowing measure.
Given the opposition, Shedd said he feels at a loss for what the next steps are heading into town meeting.
“With the selectmen pulling their support and the Finance Committee, it’s like the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes against you,” he said. “We pretty much feel like we’ve wasted our time here for the last year.”
The Fire Station Expansion Committee will reconvene on Monday, Oct. 2, at 6:30 p.m. at the fire station in preparation for special town meeting, which will be held Wednesday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. at Pioneer Valley Regional School. The location was changed from Bernardston Elementary School.