Town Meeting Members will be asked to vote on a question that asks if they are willing to spend $4,500,000 on the relocation of the police station to Black Mountain Road. The vote will in fact authorize the spending of about $13,000,000 above the five million dollar loan already taken out.
The actual loan, which will include work on the West B. fire station, is in fact anticipated to be $7,760,000. Interest on the loan, for a twenty year option, is an additional $2,740,000. What is not calculated into the final figure is the cost of having the station on the far north end of town. Nearly all the police business and activity occurs in the central, south and west end of town. Not surprising. There is almost no residential population at all in the north end.
Consequent to that location it is therefore necessary for every town vehicle that either originates from or is destined to the police station (every cop on duty, every administrator going to a meeting from or to there, every DPW trip etc etc) is traveling four extra miles and ten minutes every roundtrip. Take out a pencil and paper.
An average town employee costs $75,000/yr between pay and benefits. Using the normal 40 hour workweek thats 2,000 hours per year or about $37.50 per hour. Ten minutes is $6.16. A total of 50 trips a day may be conservative but I’ll use that. 50 times $6.16 is $330/day just in traveling time. Multiply times 365 days a year and we spend $120,000 in travel time to have our police station on Black Mountain Road. Per year. Now calculate the cost of the car. I’ll take the simpler route for that. Four miles roundtrip is 200 miles per day in town vehicles. Of course some of those trips are taken in private vehicles. On the other hand some are DPW dump trucks with sand and plows. 200 miles a day is 72,800 miles year. Thus we add about three quarters of the cost of a new car every year. Figure, conservatively, $23,000. Adding labor to materials (the car) without anything else there might be, tho that should be most of it, we have at least $143,000 per year location cost. Times 20 years. $2,860,000.
I know there seems to be a little fudging here. For instance it can be argued that additional time and labor does not increase benefits. True. But ten minutes per trip for 50 trips is 500 minutes. That’s the equivalent of an 8 hour day. What happens at first is that overtime starts creeping up. The next year the police chief is asserting that it is practical if not necessary to hire another patrolman and eliminate the overtime. That clearly makes sense. So we hire another patrolman. Now the benefits are there too. And the $60,000 training fee if the hiree is coming from the Vermont police academy.
$7,760,000 principal, $2,740,000 interest, $2,860,000 location cost. Total cost to complete the project: $13,360,000 for the first 20 years.
Adding this much bonded debt ($10,500,000 – The rest of the 13.3 will be slipped into the operating budget) will adversely impact our bond rating and probably result in yet higher interest rates on future bonds such as the million we’ll need to replace our 25 year old ladder truck. So throw a few hundred thousand more dollars into the pot to cover indirect costs.
If the Town Meeting Members vote no at the Special Town Meeting the Selectboard will return in three or four months with a more reasonable and affordable project to consider. In the meantime our police are not suffering injuries in their own building and the level of public safety seems quite satisfactory. True enough that it is a dicey situation getting a prisoner down the necessary stairs to the cell in the basement. However that hardly compares to the normal danger responding to a calls in the field that involve, or could potentially involve weapons and other severe violence. In short, we’ll survive until we can get the right project on the table.
The architectural drawing of the proposed new fire station in 1929 shows a building that looks like the High School built in 1884 that is in full use today as our Municipal Building. It looked like it was meant to last a couple centuries. The Depression and the War intervened and it didn’t get built until 1949. That’s the fire station we have now. However it was post-war days, we won, we were feeling strong and powerful and invincible. We were so sure it would only get better, for ever and ever. We were impatient. We wanted to build everything at once. We were celebrating. So we built fast and shoddily. Why not? We’ll build another later. In ’49 came the fire station. In ’51 the High School. In ’54 Academy school. All grade B construction. That may be overrating them. How many years will we get for our investment in Black Mountain Road?
cheaper option not so cheap, eh?
Good points. There are “hidden costs” to a move to Black Mountain Road that make it not so cheap. And its appeal is that it is a “cheaper option.”
If Town Meeting Representatives vote down the Police station option, the two Fire Stations could get underway, anyway. It seems as if there has been permission to do them for a long time now and they’ve been on hold so all three could be tied together.
And I think Spoon is right – if it is voted down, there will be grumbling and such, but the board will go back and work out a less expensive option to present. It is up to taxpayers to decide what they are willing to burden the community with, debt-wise.
Will they think that this is a good level of debt/taxes for the community? Even as we add in other necessary projects and emergencies that come along?
Regular voters of town have no direct say in this. It would be nice if representatives started weighing in on where they stand prior to asking for our vote in early March.
Seems Spoon's figures are
Seems Spoon’s figures are usually pretty accurate. I wish this were presented to the public via our newspaper sources also. Hopefully Spoon has sent letters into the papers This is a huge expense over what taxpayers have been told. Huge. Boy, everyone thought the rise in taxes over the last ten years was bad, wait’ll these costs kick in.
Constructive Criticism
Please watch for the new Town Finance Committee report. This is the committee that Spoon and I are the most recent past Chairs of, and which Franz Reichsman currently chairs. The other two current members are myself and Paula Melton.
This year our reports and recommendations will be fairly clear and concise. In terms of the Police/Fire project, we hope the Representatives will expedite a full, 20-year solution with no further delay. We note that the apparent savings in buying the Reformer building on Black Mountain Road would be offset by other costs. Taking that building off the tax rolls would be one of those costs, but is not mentioned in our report.
I would like to emphasize the word ‘expedite’. Every year that we put off the ultimate solution to the problems in the police and fire facilities, staff and volunteer time is lost as ‘sunk costs’. This has been going on for around two decades or longer. Imagine if there were a summation of all the paid staff and consultants’ time that has been spent on wrangling and hemming and hawing about the problems and the possible solutions. Most recently the project, approved by the Representatives in a special meeting, was delayed over the supposition that the Town budget referendum and defeat in 2014 was about the project, conjecture for which there was no proof.
Swift passage of a thorough solution will end the ‘holding pattern’ of sunk costs and possibly help that ‘sinking feeling’ that our first responders must experience ecvery time they contemplate how poorly we, the people they serve, are supporting their professional and human needs.
Personally I favor completing the project as originally approved dozens of months ago. This will require no further authorization by the Town, because all the arrangements for proceeding are already in place. The Black Mountain Road possibility requires new authorizations, and may incur further delays. Common sense dictates that, as we are now experiencing excellent executive leadership in Town government, we finish this project as gracefully and efficiently as possible, with confidence that all possible economies will be studied and realized as we move forward.
Good points
Delays can add to the cost.
An interesting number for the committee to deduce: how much does a delay add to the cost vs. how much do the additional drives/hours add to the cost. Could it be cheaper to delay a slight bit to rework the police station portion at a lower long-term cost?
I’m still a little baffled why our great nation, devoted to policing, doesn’t have funds available to help build these structures. Perhaps we aren’t being creative enough with the grants. Maybe we should apply for $15 million for a “Terrorism Prevention Equipment Storage and Operations Facility.”
The original pan approved dozens of months ago builds a rather unsightly addition on the Municipal Center. It would save the costs Spoon talks of, and could be done without delay as John hopes, but I’d want a bit more from the design to make it a good-looking addition to the town for years to come.
This wouldn’t be that hard or costly. Making the outside walls and roof lines beautiful can be inexpensive, and can be the type of thing that is planned for and implemented over time. Some clever planters hung on the walls for trailing plants, some space for artwork, and so on could be built in.
delays
It goes without saying that delays add costs only if one sticks with the precise project initially proposed. If the delay results in a better project the costs may be less. In any case it’s something of a false argument for an proposed expenditure. Everything is increasing in cost all the time. Beginning at the beginning. If six months rather than five were spent discussing the need for the project then costs went up. In fact delaying a decision can be a good strategy for getting it decided in the way one wants. A decision is made from impatience rather than a sense of confidence. Of course the rate of regrettable decisions increases dramatically but at least a decision was made. Is that a sound practice in a democracy or for good government?
The notion of delay being costly shifts the basis of decisions away from the considerations of solid information to one of pure emotions. If this project is projected to cost a lot more than it should have it may be because of how it was conceived and the intractability of the administrations. This is evident in the manner that was sought to include citizen advice. The Selectboard formed a committee that it charged to look only at efficiencies in the project as proposed rather than allowing it to question whether the project, or parts of it, had sufficient efficacy to begin with. Thus almost everyone who joined the committee were those who fully accepted it as it was. They could talk about the cost of block versus concrete but not whether the structure was justified at all. They were not representing the citizens at all. They were just being used by the Selectboard to provide some cost control.
Another big mistake was deciding that everything had to be done at once and sticking to that for twelve years come hell or high water. It was only last year, out of sheer exhaustion, frustration and, primarily, the rejection of a town budget that the Selectboard revisited some basic assumptions.
Not to mention many of the
Not to mention many of the problems cited as to why the municipal center isn’t sufficient to house the police department (like mold) will need to be remedied anyway if the PD is moved to the reformer building before the space can be rented.
So, we’re paying for some level of repairs to the municipal center regardless, and counting on rental income is not the safest of assumptions…
I will support this project if other cuts are made to offset its costs. Otherwise, I would hope anything that increases the tax rate any further is voted down.
50?
Spoon, where do you get the number 50 trips per day that would need to be made in addition to what is happening now? Your whole argument rests on this, and I wonder how accurate it is.
good question
I don’t know that it is 50. I do know that at least 25 cops a day depart and return every day for their shifts. There’s constant other business required of the rest of the personnel. Bringing in people, going to meetings etc. Does every cop go out in the morning and not return til their finished, as a matter of routine? Undoubtedly some additional trips. Maybe it’s only 35 or 40 trips a day. Maybe it’s 60 or 70. I suspect the latter is closer. Funny thing is, if in fact it was that in most all instances a cop stays out from the beginning of their shift to the end how much does $8.5 to 9 million (all said and done) worth of new station house improve their working conditions? The remedies we’re proposing become more preposterous. If we want to improve their working conditions our cruisers should be as comfortable as Lincolns or Volvos.
There seems to be an assumption that the police would not be asking for anything that they cannot live without. If the public accepts that premise there isn’t any reason to be discussing the project at all. As the Finance Committee would tell us there has to be an acceptable rationale for expenditures. That rationale would necessarily have to include that the item itself is necessary and that there is no less expensive way of providing it. Neither conditions have been satisfactorily met in the police station proposal.
Changing it up a bit...
INSTEAD of moving the police station to the opposite end of town, why not move the town offices to the other end of town and give the police full run of the current building? any reason why not?
Hmmm...
Nice twist worth discussing!
It would be as convenient to reach other town offices at the north end as it would be to reach the police if they were there.
Municipal Center would still need some upgrading, but perhaps not as much, and maybe in a different way.
Police would remain closer to downtown and neighborhoods.
A different number of cars would need to go to the north end for town business.
$1200-$1500
In today’s Brattleboro historical news:
“1886:
The question of providing a new lock-up is to come up at the town meeting, and the necessity of such provision is so generally conceded that we are confident some definite action will be taken in the matter. It is estimated that a small brick building suitable for that purpose could be erected in the rear of the town hall for $1200 or $1500, complete.