As a longtime resident and member of the fire department in town I feel compelled to speak about Article # 17. This article is intended to fund architectural and engineering designs for a proposed renovation of the Woodville Fire Station.
I applaud the efforts of Chief Miller and Deputy Chief Daugherty in bringing the issue to light for the residents of town and to come up with an affordable option to maintain a second fire station in town. The Woodville section of town has had it’s own fire station for many, many years. Historically, this station was manned by volunteer and on call firefighters that lived in Woodville, and also employees of the former Farrar Company on Winter St. This fire station served the community well but was never intended to be a fully staffed 24/7 station. However for storm coverage events and for Covid, there were certainly times when it did fill an immediate need. It has been decades since the Farrar Company closed, and any on call members have lived in Woodville and responded to that station. With that being said, that station has been used for storage of equipment and not much else until it was used recently for Covid.
In a perfect world, we would have multiple fire stations, with no area greater than a 5 minute ETA from any one of them, but that is just not feasible. So what do we do? We turn to hard data. I have had discussions with friends who live on that side of Hopkinton and they love having a neighborhood fire station, and to be perfectly honest, who wouldn’t? I want every citizen in this community to be as safe as possible, however finances are what they are and we have to live within our means. With every dollar so critical, and public safety needs to keep us safe and well, and the schools are trying to maintain the highest levels of educating our children, and every other town department trying to maintain the best levels of service for our citizens, we need to be smart and make decisions with facts and data, and not emotions.
If you follow the data, you will notice that the majority of calls in town are off of West Main Street. Responses from the Woodville station would have to come back east, approximately 2/3’s of the way towards town to access Elm Street, before they can continue their response towards West Main Street. Any responses out of Station # 2 are in a difficult location as it is a bit of a blind corner. The lot has environmental concerns as it is right next to a brook which could limit any construction on the current site.
Historically fire stations are designed to have decades of longevity in serving their communities, if properly placed. I have a bad feeling that we are “throwing good money after bad”, and that by “putting lipstick on a pig”, we would be doing our citizens a great disservice by being foolhardy with their hard earned money.
We need to examine the data, confirm a more central location, secure some land, and then support an article to construct a new “state of the art” facility that we can better serve our citizen’s out of and expand accordingly in the future.
I would recommend voting against article # 17, for those reasons and let’s come back being more educated with the data and facts before we do anything fiscally irresponsible.
Don Collins
I like what Ashland has done building a flag ship public safety building that now houses both their police and fire departments, https://www.facebook.com/ashlandpsb/ . It is also right on Rt. 135 so easier to access all parts of town.
I agree Darlene that Ashland’s public safety building is a great design and a great location! Southboro has the same set up on Rt. 85. It looks like an awesome setup!
I wholeheartedly agree with Firefighter Don Collins letter to the editor! This is NOT an issue that needs to take place now. Right now, the fire department needs to complete the work on the Woodville station to make it safe to enter the building and be there for the limited times that it needs to be manned. We voted at last year’s town meeting to fund $400,000 to try to fix the building that is badly out of shape to the extent that it is hazardous to the firefighters that had to work there during the COVID outbreak etc. Spending our tax money that is already stressing so many people’s budgets on architectural and engineering designs for a proposed renovation of the Woodville Fire Station is a waste of money. First, we need to figure out if we need it and secondly where is the best location to place one if that needs exists. Then and only then, do we start to do the architectural and engineering designs for the proposed project. An additional note is that we do need more firefighters to work but we had an excellent program in place when the chief took over. Unfortunately, he cancelled the program. The program had a group of firefighters work 4-10 hour shifts instead of the two 24 hour shifts the groups now work. (The irony is that I have seen ads trying to get more firefighters to work in our town and the ad says that we have the 4 day–10-hour day shifts available! No..that program was cancelled!) The beauty in the day program for firefighters is that you can schedule firefighters work when there is a need for more personnel to be on duty…as an example…when people are going to and from work. The statistics of when calls are made show that there are times during the day when additional personnel should be in place instead of calling in firefighters to work overtime. An added benefit is that you don’t need to have bedrooms for them. They go home to sleep in their own homes at night. Just a thought…there were firefighters who loved this program but were taken off of it and put back on to the 24-hour shifts.
I will be voting NO on Article #17.
Seems to me the 4 10 hour shifts would be a savings for the town as it does not include automatic overtime every week for everyone. Let’s save $$
Don.
Thank you for the logical argument. It makes sense to me.
Before we spend money on architectural and engineering designs, the town should look at all viable options. Splitting our firefighters resources seems like a poor option.
The town needs to plan better and be more fiscally responsible with taxpayers money. Unfortunately this and other spending will be decided by the 1% of the population that has the ability to make it to the town meeting over the coming days.
Maybe Mr Collins should spend his time and energy on his own department at Logan Airport/ Massport. Chief Miller has the overall responsibility for the health and safety of his firefighters, while providing services to a growing community. What he doesnt need is a Monday morning quaterback.
So Mr. Foley, no one is allowed to express their opinions other than to rubber stamp the chief’s decisions? I am grateful for Mr. Collins’ note. It had many good points about why building another main fire station needs far more investigation as to if we need it and where it should be placed if we find the need exists. We also have a chief headed out the door to the Bellingham fire department to be their chief leaving the rest of us to foot a bill that will be enormous for a building in a wetlands at the edge of town. It should have been investigated far better. At the very least this second station that we aren’t even sure we need is in the wrong location.