Town Meeting voters on May 13 will see two articles for two Proposition 2 ½ exemption questions slated for the ballot this Election Day – one to fund a new fire station, and one to fund Mattapoisett’s share of the $2 million ORR athletic field complex and auditorium project.
On April 12 the Mattapoisett Board of Selectmen approved the language for the two ballot question articles that will first be debated at Town Meeting before voters go to the polls May 21.
Question one will read: “Shall the Town of Mattapoisett be allowed to exempt from the provisions of Proposition Two and One-Half, the amounts required to pay for the bond issued in order to design, engineer, bid, construct, equip and furnish a new Fire Station to be located on the parcel of Town-owned land shown as Mattapoisett Assessors Map 9, Lot 77, and any and all incidental and related costs.”
Many in Mattapoisett have heard about the dire straits the current fire station suffers, primarily due to age. OSHA’s regulations demand a variety of safety features in all municipal fire stations to ensure interior air quality meets standards, that there is adequate space to decontaminate equipment and personal gear, and adequate shower rooms for coed staffing, to name a few.
Mattapoisett’s current fire station meets none of those standards.
Voters will be asked in Question One to allow the town to borrow several million dollars to build the new station adjacent to the Police Station.
“What we’ll do is recast soon-to-be-expiring debt,” Town Administrator Michael Gagne told The Wanderer during a follow-up. He said the plan is to take some funds from revenue to apply to bonds that were originally secured for capital school and library improvements years ago. With those coming to an end, Gagne believes the plan will allow for the fire station to be paid off without taxpayers seeing a spike to property taxes.
Proposition 2 ½, Gagne explained, allows for towns to borrow, with voters’ approval, to override the legislative tax levy restriction when seeking “an exclusion.”
But voters are also being asked to incur debt for Old Rochester Regional High School athletic facilities and auditorium renovations and improvements.
Question two will read: “Shall the Town of Mattapoisett be allowed to exempt from the provisions of Proposition Two and One-Half, the amounts required to pay for the bond issued in order to design, engineer, bid, construct certain improvements to the Athletic Facilities and Auditorium at the Old Rochester Regional High School at 135 Marion Road, as shown on the Mattapoisett Assessors May 3, Lot including any and all incidental and related costs.”
“The voters in all three towns must agree to incur this debt,” Gagne said. It will take a two-thirds vote for the questions to pass, two-thirds in all three towns, he said. “If it fails at Town Meeting but passes on the ballot, then the towns will have to revisit the question at another Town Meeting,” Gagne further explained.
During a prior working meeting held on April 5, the Mattapoisett Board of Selectmen discussed the ORR TURF Committee proposal and its estimated $2 million price tag. This proposal would financially impact the tri-towns, Gagne said April 5, with Marion picking up 28 percent of the costs, Mattapoisett 34 percent, and Rochester 36 percent – figures the committee arrived at based on student enrollment.
Selectman Jordan Collyer was concerned about whether the project had been cycled through the ORR capital needs process, and the board expressed unease over the potential financial impact a project of this size would have on Mattapoisett, despite of the shared costs.
“My feeling is, it is going to be a debt service,” Collyer stated two weeks ago, adding, “You do not have the capital in the levy to fund this.”
A date is pending when a joint meeting between the Finance Committee, Capital Planning, and the ORR Turf Committee may take place. Gagne told the board that a proposed date of April 18 was scuttled due to spring vacation.
During an April 16 follow-up with Collyer, he said of the ORR Turf Project, “Something has to be done, but not now.”
For Collyer, the current condition of the athletic fields and other high school facilities may very well need repairs; however, he said, “We’ve been talking to them about maintenance. I don’t know if it’s a lack of money, or management, or whose fault it is, but they (ORR) don’t plan maintenance well.
“It’s not the right time, and they didn’t follow the Capital Plan Process,” Collyer continued. “They brought in a non-profit group and thrust this upon us.”
Collyer said the ORR TURF project wasn’t on the high school’s capital list.
But it is fair, Collyer added, that the project appear on the ballot. But, in Collyer’s opinion, unlike the new fire station, which he said the Town had worked hard to plan for in an effort to keep taxpayer impact negligible, the “fields” project was not put through the same fiscal disciplines.
“If they had come to us with some offsets that would have helped,” Collyer continued, but he said nothing was offered in terms of how to pay for a bond if one was put in place. “I don’t think the TURF project is one we can push off indefinitely, but we need to see a fully conceived business plan.”
Selectman Tyler Macallister told The Wanderer on April 16, “For the record, I’m not against fixing the field and other things, but we have a vetting process. … This circumvented that process.”
Macallister went on the say that, over the years, selectmen have discussed the condition of the fields and other areas of the school and its property, “But they didn’t listen – it was ignored.
“We are not a funding source with unlimited funds,” Macallister said. “This was handled poorly … and I don’t ever remember being invited to a meeting with them.”
By Marilou Newell