BUCKLAND – The town is one vote away from building a Highway Department garage that isn’t in violation of building codes.
Voters in a Special Town Meeting backed a $2.8 million highway facility in a 55 to 21 secret ballot vote.
Now, voters must ratify that decision in an Proposition 2½ debt exclusion override election to authorize the borrowing that will be required for the project.
That election is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 14.
At the Saturday town meeting, the Highway Garage Committee gave a presentation on the project, which will be on the land of old Mayhew Steel plant, and the committed explained the reasons it supported the project as proposed.
The proposal includes a 5,000-square-foot, four-bay garage and a 5,000-square-foot pole barn, after demolishing what is currently the southern building. One of the buildings would be demolished while the other would remain, for the time being.
Garage project member, Ray Lanza-Weil, said the project will provide the town “with what its currently missing – a safe space for our highway personnel to operate, an appropriate facility to store vehicles, proper ventilation for working on vehicles and equipment, a wash bay, and improvements to heating and lighting and office space in the same location.”
Lanza-Weil said the committee worked to try to get the lowest price possible, which is a grand total of $2,822,853.
“The most likely scenario is a bond with a 30-year term., This bond will be issued when the project is completed in November of 2019. Payments will begin in 2020 and will end in 2049,” Lanza-Weil said. “It will be a gross cost of $1.35 per $1,000 assessed value. It’s actually less than that because by the time we start paying on the bond we’ll have reduced our other debt repayment costs so we’ll have eliminated some debt and other payments will have gone down.”
A debt-exclusion override lets the town temporarily raise taxes above its levy limit for a specific project, such as the new garage. When the debt is repaid, the tax hike goes away.
Selectmen Zachary Tuner said when the project was originally proposed and before he was elected as Selectoard member, he did not support it. Since then, he’s had a change of heart.
“The garage committee took this, they looked at it over and over again, and they got this down to the absolute bare minimum that we should bring this down to,” Turner said. “This is a good price. I do construction work for a living and this is $1 million less than I anticipated the cost was going to be.”
Residents asked questions about the ways the debt exclusion will affect their taxes, as well the possibility of getting grants to do the project and why the committee chose to have a pole barn as part of the project.
Town Administrator Andrea Llamas said the town may find grants for the project, but they aren’t awarded at construction.
Selectboard member and garage committee member Dena Willmore explained that the pole barn will be used to get equipment out of the weather, without having to store them in a heated space.
“We decided that there would be a greater cost to the town if we didn’t’ protect the equipment from the weather,” Willmore said. “We’re recommending the smallest garage we think is appropriate. It’s unheated, gravel-based to store equipment. We were going to have a thee-sided pole barn but we were worried about vandalism.”
She said having a four-sided pole barn allows for the building to be locked.
The committee also explained that it believed it was more cost effective to build new buildings rather than try to retrofit the current ones.
Wilmore said the current buildings aren’t up to code and the town is not currently permitted to be use them.
Tunrer said the current building would need, “a sprinkler system added. A 5,000-square-foot pole barn wouldn’t need sprinklers system. Also … you would need to put in an oil and water recapture system (for the floor of the existing building), which means digging up the concrete floor, put in the recapture system, then put on a new concrete floor – it’s an added cost.”
Following the question and answer period, there was a proposal for a paper ballot – resulting in the article passing.
The Selectboard expects that if the voters approve the debt-exclusion then the project will begin as early as this winter.
It has been 10 years now, since the Highway Department was ousted from its old Conway Street garage by the building inspector, who deemed the building structurally unsound. After looking for a new garage site and town meeting approval for some of those sites, Buckland rented the old Mayhew Steel plant on the Sears Street Extension in 2014 for $5,000 per month. In 2016, the town unanimously voted to buy the 4.7 acre site for $325,000. However, Building Inspector James Cerone determined that the building did not meet minimum standards required for a municipal garage.
In 2017, the town sought $3.5 million for new construction of a highway garage, but that proposal was narrowly defeated.