Greenfield finds itself on the precipice of two major capital infrastructure projects of great importance to our city: a new library and a new fire station. The two projects are joined at the hip by their very existence and locations. Hold on to that point as you read further.
Both of these buildings are urgently needed in order to meet our city infrastructure needs of the 21st century and beyond. As early as 1994, Greenfield identified that the existing fire station needed to be updated or replaced. Built in 1930, it does not meet the standards required of a modern municipal fire station built to support the safety of our firefighters, to support our firefighting infrastructure, and protect our personal and real estate property, and has not for some time.
Also after many years of needs-based study, two renovations, and more recently, hard work on the part of many citizens to achieve funding, the new library will be built on city-owned property currently being used as a public parking lot. The current fire station directly abuts the property and prevents the full library construction from going forward without removal of the fire station. This is not new information to the city’s elected officials. It is the impetus for having to build both projects simultaneously.
Both new projects have been funded by votes of the City Council. Additionally for the library, a generous $9.4 million dollar grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) was authorized. But we will need to go back to the City Council to authorize additional borrowing for the fire station.
The good news is the City of Greenfield and its residents can afford to build both structures at the same time through grants, gifts, and bonding. That has been confirmed by our Financial Director Liz Gilman, and our financial adviser Lynne Welch, who help control our capital spending, and with whom I am in constant consultation. While bonding represents debt, which understandably gives our taxpayers pause, we do have enough borrowing capacity to do both projects, including the essential appropriation of an additional $6 million dollars. The two projects are part of our Capital Improvement Plan and have been in that plan for several years. As long as we stay within our debt range of 8-10% in bonding expenditures, capital funding does not immediately affect your taxes given how we spread out our capital debt. Your tax rate, and therefore your taxes, increases for other reasons associated with budgeting in our general operating budget: increased health insurance rates, negotiated salary increases, and associated increased retirement contributions, among them.
A temporary fire station must be built in order for the library to begin its scheduled construction by April 21. There is no way around that fact. We cannot build one project without the other. In order to get that done, the city likely will have to request a six-month extension from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, who controls the grant requirements and the purse strings of funding for the project, or we risk losing their grant money and having to pay back what we’ve already spent on the library project. There is no other entity, certainly not the State Legislature, who can grant that extension. I have asked our state legislators to support us in that effort.
At one point in 2018, former Mayor William Martin thought the city could build the fire station on another piece of city-owned property on Riddell and Beacon streets. As with the library site, building on city-owned property meant we did not need to purchase property for the new fire station.
When I took office in January 2020, I learned for the first time that building on that property depended on a $2.5 million dollar earmark in a 2018 state Economic Development Bond Bill to be used to clean up significant environmental contamination on the property. Total cleanup costs for the environmental contamination and mitigation for that property are estimated at $2.5-$4 million dollars. In early 2020, I sought to secure that earmark from the state Executive Office of Housing, Community and Economic Development but was told the money would not be forthcoming due to the uncertainties of state finances associated with reduced revenues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This made that property unusable for the fire station.
This brings us all to our current reality. The $10 million put in the capital budget by Mayor Martin for a new fire station is not sufficient to fund its construction today. The city has to spend some portion of the appropriated $10 million for the purchase of property as well as construction of the temporary fire station. Neither of those actions, the purchasing of a different property or relocating the fire department to a temporary fire station, were required when planning for the new fire station began in 2018-2019. That leaves us with inadequate funding to build a new state-of-the art fire station, without the approval to borrow additional funds from the Council.
Roxann Wedegartner is the mayor of Greenfield.