Ok, We are mostly black on white again. Everybody rest their eyes.
Well where have we seen this before? The State inspects a Mendon public safety building and finds that it is unsafe even for the rodents who live in the walls. The inspectors’ rule that unless the town does something to improve the deplorable conditions the state will fine the town (That's you and me) and close the building. Think Police Station 2000.
Now the 50+-year-old fire station is in the cross hairs of the State Division of Occupational Services. The town has 30 days to come up with a solution to the problems. Chief Horn and Deputy Chief Mark Poirier estimate this will cost $250,000 or more. That's $40 for every man women and child in Mendon. Very expensive Band-Aids and no solution to the long-term problem. Deja vu indeed!
Ken O'Brien is acting as if this is something out of the blue. Hello Ken... the public safety people have been screaming about this for nearly 10 years. It must be all those box tops and all that grandstanding in Waveland that gives you amnesia.
Does anyone have any suggestions for our Leaders on how they should approach this latest self-inflicted crisis?
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22 comments:
I think you have to start with the "Leaders" and work down.
Shut down the full-time fire department staff temporarily. Address any safety issues that will allow for on-call fire-fighters and have the deputy chief work out of the Town Hall.(This should reduce the "band-aid" cost though it is tough to say without actually seeing the report)
My guess is the call made to OSHA was intended to push a new building to the forefront. The need for a building should have been addressed before we went full-time with a fire dept staff.
We need at least one new building. When it is built is when we should look into being a full time department.
I fully expect my opinion to be in the minority.
At some point this town needs to realize the infrastructure is old, failing, and needs to be upgraded or replaced. First it was the police station, now the fire station, and I am sure the town hall will follow soon. How many times do we have to try the band-aid approach before we realize it is much less expensive in the long run to deal with the problems before they become time sensitive rather that putting things off in hopes they will go away. We now spend more each year on police overtime than it would have cost for the debt service on a new police station, and soon we may have to spend more to fix the fire station than the debt service on a new fire station will cost. Put the two costs together and balance that against debt service on a public safety building for both and the difference is even more. How much have we spent trying to keep town hall usable, and eventually we will hear the same thing about that building too. Instead of doing something we continue to delay, study, analyze, look at options, form committees to do all of the above, and do nothing. As long as voters, and leaders, in this town make every decision based on the concept that our taxes can never increase it will continue to cost more, and continue to take away from the town’s ability to delver services we really need, instead of services we don’t need, like police overtime. We need to rebuild the town infrastructure, a new police/fire station, town hall, and even space for a town library, put it all together in one location, and be done with it all. Sure, the library can wait, but if it’s incorporated into everything else the cost will be minimal compared to doing it separately and later. Build it on the Fino land, if that land is really usable, and the historians can have all of the old buildings for museums, or whatever one does with old buildings. I bet the total cost for debt service for all of this would be around $500 or $600 per home, and the town can be done. And yes, I know, our taxes will go up, and yes, they are going to go up for the operation of town government too, but you get what you pay for, and so far we have paid nothing, and that’s what we have.
An aside to Hanging Gardens…..get rid of the black background. Although my high school English teacher might be proud of me for saying you really mean to symbolize a dark cloud hanging over Mendon with this black background, for those of us who are advancing in age, and need glasses to read anyway, it’s almost impossible to make this stuff out. Some nice contrasting colors would be nice!
THE COLOR SCHEME
We were not trying to introduce any symbolism with the color changes. We were actually attempting to make the blog easier to read.
We can try another color scheme but it requires republishing the blog and all the comments and re-writing a fair amount of imbedded code for the counters etc. Give it a couple of days and anyone else who would like to see a change let us know in your comments.
We want the thing to be easy on the eyes.
HG
Do not raise my taxes again.
Sell off some of the town owned land to pay for the infrastructure improvements that are needed.
Why is the town web site at www.mendonfire.com?
See what I mean, do whatever, but don’t raise taxes. That’s why nothing gets done. I’m all for selling off unused town-owned land to pay for this stuff, but does Mendon really have $8 million dollars of town-owned land it can sell. That’s probably what a new public safety building will cost. We can’t sell off land needed to build these facilities on. Sorry……if you want to upgrade the town infrastructure your taxes are going to increase. For those who have trouble with the ever increasing property tax, maybe the town needs to set up some sort of sliding scale, based on family income, not property value, that has those who can afford it paying a little more and still allow those who truly can’t a break. But regardless, the longer we wait, thinking we are saving ourselves from tax increases, the more it will cost to throw money away on things like police overtime and new HVAC systems for a fire station that is falling apart. Ever consider your taxes keep increasing because we waste money on police overtime ($150,000 a year), town hall repairs ($35,000 just recently), fixing the fire station (anywhere from $75,000 - $250,000), which forces other town departments to get less, and pushes towards a town needed override for town services?
Under Mass General Law it is illegal to establish any local tax code without approval from the legislature. Changing the property tax laws to a sliding scale would never be allowed.
Mendon doesn’t have any land that would fetch $8,000,000 on the market so that idea is out.
An override is already in the works this year from the School District and it probably will be substantial.
Mendon was well on the way to fixing the infrastructure problems in 2004. The plans were drawn up for a new Police Station (at a cost of $250,000). The plan was to build that building and then build a new Fire Station several years later as in right now. Sharon Cutler railed about that plan and got it defeated after 3 years of hard work. Back to square one. Her main complaint was that a duel use building would save money over 2 separate buildings. Yes it would, about $400,000 in construction savings. The problem is Mendon taxpayers have already spent more that twice that amount in band-aids and overtime with no solution in sight. Nice move Sharon! You’re a real math wizz.
Here we are in 2006 without a Police station, without a Fire Station and hemorrhaging huge amounts of money in every budget cycle to keep fingers in a rapidly deteriorating dike. We have paralytic leadership at best. At worst they are petty and selfish. Unless and until that changes taxes will continue to go up, and for nothing.
Dale Pleau
An override for the school is always in the works.
We are not opposed to the changes that are needed.
And yes, it all pegs back to lack of leadership.
I couldn't disagree more. Sell off the town land to save anonymous $40.....give me a break. That land that gets sold off will end up another development of cardboard cut-out colonials....or even worse, low-income housing. What could be more depressing? Mendon is one of the few towns left that seemingly values open space. I enjoy the outdoors and I'm thankful I have a place to do so. Cough up the $40.....it's not even a tank of gas these days. More importantly, proper town management would probably uncover that the necessary funds are available, just mismanaged.
I just got a call from a friend (yes I have a few) who read my comment and said: Ok, big mouth what's your plan to fix the problem?
Here it is short and sweet: Pull the police station plans from 2004 out of mothballs. Re-vote the original plan to locate the new police station behind the current one and remove the current building upon completion. Complete the landscaping of the town hall campus gaining 25 parking places without tearing down the current fire station. We will save $350,000 not having to design another police building assuming a joint use building will cost $7,000,000 to build and we will stop the band-aids and bleeding of nearly $200,000 a year when the doors open. Apply it to the bond.
At the same time charge the building committee with designing a new stand-alone fire station on another site to bring before the voters before the end of this year. The design cost will be about $300,000. This does not have to be something that looks like the Newton Library. We can build a state of the art building without the fancy brick façade and all the fancy bobbles that drive up the price.
The bonds will overlap, it can’t be helped we wasted too much time. The state will stay out of our face when they see the plan is moving forward.
All this would take is some direction and leadership. We are going to pay for it. Sooner is preferable to later. I say we do it now and move on to other pressing problems. Crisis management should not be the norm.
Dale Pleau
Don't validate spending more of my money by comparing it to an overpriced tank of gas.
I love the open space.I moved back to Mendon because of that. Unfortunately, the state wants more building to boost the state economy.(see Kerry Healley's speech this week)
I do agree that proper management will uncover more fund most likely.
Dale,
The plan sounds at least like a plan and agree that Sharon has wasted time and money. Why was a Safety building not considered from the beggining though?
The public safety building was considered from the beginning. That was my first choice based on costs. The reason I changed my support to a single use building was the recommendation of Police Chief Ernest Horn and the input from the architects and engineers. Their take was that a multi-use buildings didn’t save a huge amount of money beyond the initial construction and that was only about 5-10% of the costs. Also the work of Police and Fire departments was so different that duel use buildings didn’t save any money in the long run other than the original construction costs.
The bottom line is that we have a plan bought and paid for that is ready to go now. Why spend more money for a new plan to accomplish what we already have. Makes no sense to me.
We have the architects plan bought and paid for and we could have a new police station up and built in 18 months and a new fire station in the works for 24 months out. It just takes a commitment and some leadership. Got any?
Dale Pleau
Jay:
You are probably correct that the bid documents haven’t been drawn up but as I remember it the plans are done and sitting there. Should we throw $200,000 worth of plans in the dumpster? If we revert to the original plan for the police station we save that 200k and a years worth of overtime, another 150k. In overtime and patches we have already lost any savings we would have realized constructing a duel use facility. The most pressing problem we have now is time, or lack of it.
The nature of police buildings and fire stations is akin to apples and oranges. Fire stations are essentially large specialized vehicle storage buildings, big garages with open access. Police stations on the other hand are reinforced bunkers with special security systems and operate in a perpetual state of lock down. These are the primary reasons that the savings from constructing a duel use facility are minimal. About the only things they can share are and exercise room and a lobby. Everything else is duplicated.
The problem Mendon has now is the same problem we had before with regard to building a new fire station, nowhere to put it. The Fino land is out at this point. The upper fields are contaminated with pesticides and the lower end is nearly in Hopedale and has been earmarked by the selectmen for their “housing” projects. Additional testing will have to be done on the upper section and a remediation plan developed. Then the clean up begins. That would take easily 12 to 18 months even on a fast track and cost no less than a half a million dollars and could easily run to a few million depending on the test results. The purchase of that land was a financial disaster for Mendon. But I digress. Mendon needs to aggressively pursue a parcel of land with a suitable location for a fire station. This should be done publicly and openly with an eye to eminent domain if that becomes necessary.
I am open to any suggestions Jay but we now have our backs against the wall and the clock is ticking. Very soon this town will have to start putting one foot in front of the other or we will be pushed into things we don’t want and can’t afford. Years of failure to address growing problems have taken their toll. Unlike the Regional School District, town government has no vision and no one willing to take the heat to accomplish the goals and solve the problems. So here we are in 2006 with one of the best school systems in the state and one of the worst run town governments. Interesting juxtaposition.
Ok we will change the color scheme. We will go back to black on white.
Great dialog between Jay Byer and Dale Pleau. Thanks guys. At least neither of you is afraid to post your opinions here. That is more than we can say for the town fathers and mother.
HG
That's exactly what Mendon has been lacking, leadership that looks to the future and anticipates the needs of the town based on current needs and reasoned anticipation of the future growth and direction of the town. You will have a lot more control over what your town will evolve into down the road if you plan for it now. This doesn't need endless committees and funding, what it needs are strong leaders with a vision of Mendon in the future and a true commitment to the town and its citizens.
Unfortunately, their seems to be at least two visions of Mendon:
1. For the rich only.
2. With no change at all.
Untill we find and elect the Henry Clay of Mendon nothing will move forward.
Hi Riff Raff we haven't heard from you in a while.
What vision would you like to see for Mendon?
Henry Clay? Why Henry Clay?
My recollection is that Henry Clay was the proponent of the Missouri Compromise, and you remember how effective that was in staving off Civil War...
Henry Clay ran for president about 5 times. He only got the nomination twice. He lost both times.
He is credited with the Comprimise of 1850 which undid the Missouri Comprimise and held off the Civil War for 11 years.
If he had failed in that effort we might have had Millard Fillmore instead of Abe Lincoln as president when the war broke out. The rest is history I guess but what does he have to do with Mendon in 2006?
HG
Part of the reason he lost the elections was because he was the great compromisor. There were very different visions for the future. He was able to bring together people to meet common goals and instead of dividing them with their differences. It was considered a weakness then as it is now.(Sometimes it is needed)
As far as my vision of Mendon.I have always been a proponent for good planning even if(especially) it isn't a formal committee style plan.
Every good company has some sort of capital spending plan. They change them when a machine goes down or a new product line takes off.
Every town should be able to identify the needs of the town and plan for it. We do not have that.(If we do, it is not communicated)
What do we need? Give us estimated costs and schedules and quit telling us about 40b and other things that change the system. We all know costs change and we all adjust our plans according to changes. It's called life.
Seems this thread has reached a conclusion. No one disputes the need for new leadership and new direction. What is currently in place is obviously grossly ineffective. And apparently, no one cared for the white on black mode. Time to move on?
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