“You’re either deluded or stupid,” I was told by a Montague voter after our Department of Public Works Building Committee’s recent presentation on a proposed replacement for our 70-year-old, dangerous and inefficient public works facility. Maybe I’m both. After all, I did volunteer for this duty.
There seems to be general consensus, however, about the need for a new facility for the DPW. That the current building is a risk to staff, equipment and operating certainty given the possibility for immediate shut down were it to be inspected by just about any authority, is beyond discussion. What is tough to swallow is the price tag, currently about $11.2 million. Presumably, some thought has gone into that number. Indeed, there has been over two years’ effort and considerable open public dialogue in the process that will bring us to town meeting on Thursday to consider the proposal.
The town issued a request for qualifications from prospective building designers in October 2015. A seven member Public Works Facility Planning Committee was then appointed by the Selectboard to review the designer qualifications and select a firm, all in public meetings. We selected Weston and Sampson, based in large measure upon their experience designing DPW buildings across New England.
Weston then prepared a detailed needs analysis of the DPW, reviewing, along with the committee, DPW staff and other town staff, the current employee and equipment inventory along with functions necessary for accommodating the mission of a DPW now and in the future. To address changes in equipment size cost and maintenance since 1948, and to consolidate the current three DPW locations into one, the designer proposed a working floor plan for the size and estimated cost of the typical functions of our DPW. Throughout spring 2016 , the committee re-worked assumptions and discussed practical needs of the department that wrenched the total space from a preliminary design of 32,575 square feet to 21,119, and back to 27,974, which would have cost $11.5 million … two years ago.
While the building planning was proceeding, the committee was also evaluating likely sites. Considering and dismissing sites that would remove private property from the tax rolls, yet recognizing the constraints of the Avenue A site for expansion, the committee settled on a town owned parcel behind Judd Wire near the former “burn dump.”
Even as planning continued over the next year, we discovered that soils were too undependable or expensive to adapt to build upon. Finally, in late summer 2017, a town-owned site between the Public Safety building and the cemetery became available when certain environmental constraints were cleared.
Through 2017 we had held tours of the current facility, met several times in public hearings with the Selectboard, Finance Committee and Capital Planning Committee, briefed Town Meeting and held a public input forum. Committee members had also toured other DPW buildings in the region and central Mass. We continued to revise the draft space design, rotating the floor plan and condensing all into a square footprint, eliminating walls and doors, reconfiguring storage space, dropping stairways, combining a wash bay with a repair bay and other seeming endless revisions to tighten up a draft plan to bring to three public forums held early this year.
The latest design drills down to 25,500 square feet at an estimated cost of $11.2 million. Our efforts have brought the size of the project down and even after two years of rising costs, kept the project below where it may have stood two years ago.
Though all of our meetings and forums were posted and public, we know that most folks wait for the final shoe to drop at Town Meeting, so we’ve scheduled a separate town meeting without any other agenda item so that the proposal can be fully discussed. If the town meeting approves, the proposal still must go before the voters in May. We trust that the voters are neither deluded nor stupid, hence the considerable effort we’ve made with a transparent, diligent and timely proposal for their consideration.
See the plans and other documents
Jay DiPucchio, a Precinct 5 Town Meeting member, has been involved in public administration for many yeas and is a member of the ad-hoc Public Works Facility Planning Committee.