BERNARDSTON — Preparation for a potential Fire Station expansion and a petition to prohibit the sale of single-use plastics highlight the 26-article Annual Town Meeting warrant set to come before voters on Wednesday.
This year’s meeting will be held at Kringle Candle’s events barn at 7 p.m.
Article 17 involves a vote to raise and appropriate $130,000 toward the town’s Fire Station Building Account. Town Coordinator Louis Bordeaux described this as a “safeguard” that would establish a line item in the town’s budget and begin a multi-year funding plan in the event that the town decides to move forward with constructing an addition on the Fire Station.
The town obtained the 12 Church St. lot neighboring the current station in April 2020 with plans to build an addition. The current Fire Station is more than 50 years old and isn’t compliant with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations, according to Bordeaux.
In May 2021, voters approved borrowing up to $3 million for the expansion project. Support for the project was secured in the May 10 election, when a 133-68 vote approved a debt exclusion to pay for the bond needed to construct the addition. Residents also voted at a Special Town Meeting in September 2021 to raise and appropriate $130,000, paired with $89,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, to fund the new building’s design, which was completed by Jablonski DeVriese Architects last summer.
However, in April 2022, Fire Chief Peter Shedd revealed that the estimated project cost had risen to $4.58 million, nearly doubling the $2.4 million cost initially projected.
“At that point,” Bordeaux said, “we were pretty much dead in the water.”
Now, the town “may have something bubbling up in the weeds,” Bordeaux continued, declining to elaborate further until plans are finalized. Town officials are hoping for a sense of direction to become clearer within the next few weeks, he said, noting that there would likely be a Special Town Meeting scheduled for June or July in the event that residents must vote to move the process forward in some capacity.
“We collectively would love nothing more than to give our firefighters a real state-of-the-art complex because so many times, Bernardston responds to other communities. … Even though you could call it a volunteer fire department, the dedication of our firefighters and first responders is second to none,” Bordeaux said.
Should the town proceed with constructing the new building, the $130,000 to be raised and appropriated would be the first of 10 to 20 annual installments put toward the project cost. Bordeaux said officials remain hopeful that Bernardston may be awarded federal grant funding as an alternative funding source, recalling that U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern had been “very encouraging” of them to apply during a prior conversation.
Article 26, which came through a citizen’s petition proposed by Sweet Lucy’s Bakeshop owner Lucy Damkoehler, would “eliminate the sale of single-use plastic products” and “limit the type of products that may be furnished” in Bernardston.
“The use and disposal of single-use plastic products have significant impacts on the environment, including but not limited to: contributing to pollution of the land environment and waterways; contributing to the potential death of marine and other wildlife through the ingestion and entanglement; littering streets, parks, public places and local waterways; creating a burden to solid waste collection and recycling facilities; [and] requiring the use of non-renewable fossil fuel in their manufacture and composition,” the petition reasons.
The proposed bylaw, which would go into effect on July 1, was modeled nearly directly after the bylaw approved unanimously at Buckland’s Annual Town Meeting in 2019, according to Bordeaux.
Other articles included on the warrant involve funding Bernardston’s roughly $3.53 million share of education expenses for fiscal year 2024; funding the roughly $1.28 million cost of public service departments for FY24; and petitioning the Legislature to approve special legislation so that Fire Chief Peter Shedd could legally serve in his position until age 70, rather than the usual maximum age of 65.
To view the full 26-article warrant, visit bit.ly/3C9mJSJ.
Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.