GREENFIELD — According to the National Fire Prevention Association, constructing a new fire station can cost anywhere between $412 to $1,171 per square foot.
To help cities and towns manage the multi-million-dollar price tags that come with constructing new public safety and municipal buildings, state Sen. Jo Comerford and state Rep. Natalie Blais have filed legislation to create a municipal and public safety building authority, similar to existing authorities that help with building schools and libraries.
“This bill is intended to support our communities in ensuring that we have a dedicated funding stream to support municipal buildings and public safety facilities,” Blais said during a legislative hearing on Thursday. “When we’re talking about the construction of these facilities, we’re not only talking about the safety and health of the people who are responding to our communities in times of emergency, but also to our constituents. Where minutes matter and we have to make sure that we do have the most up-to-date equipment and facilities available … this bill is desperately needed.”
Joining Blais in testifying in support of S.1659 and its counterpart, H.2571, were fire chiefs and town administrators, including a few from Franklin County. They told members of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security that if passed, the bill would provide much-needed support in bringing public safety facilities up to the modern standards and needs of the first responders who work within them.
Orange Fire Chief James Young said that in a town with high levels of poverty and a limited budget, there is not a lot of extra funding available for maintenance, renovations and upgrades to public safety facilities. The department is stuck with a facility without separate sleeping and restroom facilities for male and female members, and without proper spaces to decontaminate equipment, leaving members more exposed to carcinogenic materials.
“For the last 20 years or more, we have been trying to construct a new fire station in the town of Orange, but have been unsuccessful,” Young said. “With no funding to construct a fire station, some of the things that we are limited in our daily operations include very limited space for apparatus, requiring us to store some of our equipment outside in the weather, or accessory buildings that were constructed by raising private funds. There’s a lack of proper separation for spaces for personnel and those open to the public. There’s inadequate and unsanitary spaces for storing and preparing food. … These are just a few examples of what we face on a daily basis and it is not unique to the town of Orange.”
Easthampton Fire Chief Christopher Norris said departments across the state rely on spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts and other fundraisers to help boost their budgets so they can purchase necessary equipment.
“The typical small-town fire department with a population of under 2,500 had an annual budget of less than $60,000 for the entire year,” Norris said. “As a result, many of these departments are fundraising to supplement their budgets while running 25- to 30-year-old trucks out of old garages and struggling to keep firefighters in compliant personal protective equipment.”
The bill will allow towns and cities to apply for grants and technical assistance not only for police, fire and ambulance facilities, but for highway department garages and other municipal buildings.
Amherst Town Council President Lynn Griesemer said public works crews that work to keep the town’s roads open are incredibly important, but they frequently work in old buildings that do not meet their needs. Amherst would love to replace or upgrade the facilities for its public works and fire departments, and creating a public safety and municipal building authority would help make these projects possible.
“Our DPW staff are an important part of our first responders,” Griesemer said. “Over Amherst’s 250-plus-year history, a department of public works facility has never been built. It exists in a converted trolley barn that was retrofitted in 1915. … We are ready to move forward on both of these facilities and have already conducted feasibility studies, and we would love your assistance from the Legislature.”
Chris Nolan-Zeller, assistant town administrator of Montague, said construction costs have increased to such an extent that the town cannot keep up with the needs of all its facilities. Unless the state provides aid, the amount of deferred maintenance in town will continue to grow.
“We have a well-defined five-year capital planning process backed by sound financial policies, and yet we often find ourselves in a race against time when planning needed improvements to our facilities and infrastructure,” Nolan-Zeller said. “Our town hall, senior center, and parks and recreation headquarters building were all built between 1880 and 1900. In the next five years, projected capital needs at these three buildings are above $1.6 million.”
Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher echoed Nolan-Zeller’s sentiments in a letter submitted to the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
“Many municipal facilities in Greenfield are in urgent need of improvement. We face problems in facilities such as our City Hall and public works yard that create issues of accessibility and health for city staff, as well as challenges to city operations,” Desorgher wrote. “This legislation would help municipalities like Greenfield make needed improvements without putting undue burden on taxpayers.”
Committee members expressed support for the bill, but asked how much funding would be needed to support the new building authority, noting that the Massachusetts School Building Authority is only able to support a few construction projects each year, and for fiscal year 2025, it had a budget of $847.1 million.
The bills state that one-third of the revenues from the marijuana excise tax will be allocated toward the authority. Comerford said the tax collects approximately $168 million annually, and while a third of that may not be enough to address all the infrastructure needs across the state, it’s a good start. She added that the bill stipulates that at least 10% of funding be allocated to rural communities.
“Small rural communities are especially burdened by the costs of building new municipal buildings,” she said.
“Our town halls, our police and fire stations and our DPWs are the backbone of local government, but these facilities are aging. They are inadequate and too often neglected, and our small towns are financially stretched, and they lack the resources and technical capacity to modernize this infrastructure,” Franklin Regional Council of Governments Executive Director Linda Dunlavy said. The bills “propose a well-structured, transparent and equitable solution to address these challenges.”
Reach Madison Schofield at 413-920-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.
