GREENFIELD — Mayor Roxann Wedegartner is asking City Council for $6 million more for Greenfield’s temporary and new fire station project, instead of the $5 million she originally requested.
Wedegartner said that based on the current estimates, it makes sense to ask for more than the project might need. The city is in “urgent need” of a new fire station, she said, but it will have to move into a temporary one while the new one is being built, because the Greenfield Public Library is going to start its new building project next year and will need the old fire station property to do so.
The current fire station, which was built in 1930, does not meet the standards required of a modern municipal fire station, Wedegartner said. The city has been discussing building a new one since 1994.
The new fire station project has been approved by City Council.
“We’ll be paying for the project through bonding, grants and other avenues,” Wedegartner said.
The estimated cost of the temporary fire station, which will be located in the municipal parking lot on Hope Street, has increased from $1.7 million to $1.9 million, leaving $14.1 million for the new fire station project. The mayor has said she will seek other types of funding if cost estimates increase beyond that amount.
Wedegartner has been consulting with Greenfield Finance Director Elizabeth Gilman and Financial Advisor Lynne Welch, who help control the city’s capital spending, and said she feels confident the city can do this. She explained that bonding represents debt to the city, but Greenfield has enough borrowing capacity for an additional $6 million. The temporary and permanent fire station are part of the city’s Capital Improvement Plan.
“As long as we stay within our debt range of 8 to 10 percent in bonding expenditures, capital funding does not immediately affect taxes given how we spread out our capital debt,” Wedegartner said.
She said people’s tax rates will increase for other reasons, including health insurance rates, negotiated salary increase and retirement contributions, but they won’t increase right away because of the fire station project.
“The temporary fire station needs to be built for the library to begin its scheduled construction by April 21, 2021,” Wedegartner said. “There’s no way around that.”
The library cannot be built without the fire station moving to another location, and she said it is likely the library will request a six-month extension from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, so it doesn’t lose its funding for the new library.
Wedegartner said the fire station project — including the temporary station — is expected to cost $16 million, $10 million of which has already been approved by City Council. Because the city has to buy private property to build the new fire station, it has increased the cost of the project; originally it had planned to build on city-owned land.
If the temporary fire station comes in under $6 million, that money would go toward building the new permanent fire station, which would most likely not be constructed until at least the end of 2023, so firefighters would spend about two years at the temporary site in the municipal parking lot on Hope Street.
The city is still in negotiations, but hopes to purchase property at Main Street and Coombs Avenue, the open-air market property, to build the new permanent station.
City councilors told Wedegartner and Fire Chief Robert Strahan in October that they would rather have the city ask for more now and not have to come back to the City Council, than to ask for too little.
The city has decided it will not include police and dispatch services by building a public safety complex, as it had originally planned, because it won’t be able to afford that until 2030 or later. Therefore, police and dispatch services will stay on High Street.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.