BRATTLEBORO — The Police and Fire Facilities Project should not proceed, as it is currently proposed, for the following reasons:
• The town has not made a sufficient analysis of the project's affordability. It has not presented data that allows a clear understanding of how additional loans and higher taxes would impact taxpayers. What will the debt load be in five years adding this project to scheduled capital improvements in this period?
• The problems described by the Police Department do not warrant the expenditures proposed. There is no assessment nor prioritization of the town's needs. It might be that employment and economic development, housing, food and energy security, health care, or even municipal employee pensions are of greater concern to citizens than some of the parts of this project.
The Selectboard states that the first two project proposals were voted down because of affordability issues. In neither of those instances was data presented that addressed affordability. Now the Selectboard brings the project back for the third time and, remarkably, still does not provide data to judge affordability. On top of that, the board immensely complicates the matter by proposing five greatly varied options.
The voters have no useful information upon which to make an informed decision.
I believe the most useful way to go forward - to build the fire station and do the minimum level for the police at the Municipal Center - is not even an option. That's a $7 million plan requiring only $2 million in new money.
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What do we know about the Police and Fire Facilities Project?
We know that it has been in the works for 20 years. (Historical note: a new fire station was recommended in 1929 and finally built in 1949.)
We also know that the passage of time by itself does not justify a questionable intention. A long time ago, preliminary plans were drawn to create a four-lane avenue that would begin at Linden and Park Place, run down Chapin, turn onto Oak, and rip straight through to Canal. Fifty-three years later, it is still an ill-conceived plan.
We know that every police and fire department in the world desires a shiny new station. We also know that our shoddily built central firehouse is inadequate for modern equipment and firefighting.
We know that the Municipal Center, which houses the police station, can function for another hundred years and, given the modest rate of crime and the general sense of safety among the citizenry, the police are operating effectively enough out of this facility. Granted, it isn't as comfortable as they would like.
We also know that the best police station money can buy will have no effect on the proliferation of dangerous drugs, our biggest current problem.
We know that the water, dampness, and mold in the Municipal Center basement is a routinely corrected problem. If the town is not going to abandon the building altogether, it has to do that maintenance anyway and thus might as well keep the police station there.
If the police station is removed from the Municipal Center, the justification for and interest in maintaining that building at all is going to decline. If that leads to thinking about removing the town's administrative offices as well, all the money we invest in the building becomes a waste.
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We know that the town administration made a decision 15 years ago that all the police and fire physical problems should be addressed at once and since then have refused to entertain any other possibility.
We know that over the years many other possibilities have been suggested and cast aside without public discussion. For instance, it is reasonably believed that if the police station were separated from the project the fire station would have been built long ago. The problems enumerated by the police never justified a $5 million solution.
We know that if the police station is moved to Black Mountain Road, the remoteness will add another $1 million in transportation costs over the 20-year bond period. This expense was not added into the proposed cost.
We know that a community is socially stronger when its police station is in its center. It almost goes without saying that isolating police in a remote area undermines the concept of an integrated community. Remoteness is close to invisibility, which will erode accountability and trust.
We also know that the greatest concentration of car-less citizens is in the center of the community and that the police station compels a high degree of citizen use.
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We know that the town's economy has been in general decline for 50 years and steeper decline in the last 15. We know that a quarter of the town's inhabitants are living on subsidies and/or low to moderate fixed incomes.
We know that our economic woes, exacerbated by continuing layoffs at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Station, are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
We know that the town has no strategic plan for moving ahead. Without such a plan, the administration decides what the citizens should want, rather than have the citizens themselves making that decision.
This modus operandi has been the tradition because in decades past there was, or we thought there was, enough money for almost everything.
That is no longer true and is unlikely to ever be true again.
We have to think hard about what is most important, make every dollar count and everything last.
This is strategic planning, and it must be done first - not later.