Following a second public hearing on the subject on Tuesday night, the Peterborough Select Board voted to support a plan to renovate the current Department of Public Works garage, instead of building a new one on Water Street.
The decision comes only a week before the public is set to vote on a bond to pay for the work at Town Meeting.
The renovation plan is expected to cost about $2.5 million – $1.5 million less than the previous proposal.
“I think you found a unicorn here. Let’s lasso it,” Selectman Tyler Ward told Town Administrator Rodney Bartlett following the hearing.
Currently, the bond request is for $4 million, which would have covered building a new facility on Water Street, adjacent to the town’s water treatment facilities. The plan was to demolish the existing garage on Elm Street, and have the Elm Street lot eventually house a new fire station for the town.
After hearing objections to the plan during the budget hearing, the board went back to look at alternative options for the garage, including re-looking at renovation of the existing building and adding about 10,000 square feet of space to resolve the need for additional equipment storage.
There is not enough land on the current lot to also build a fire station. However, Bartlett has reached out to the owner of the adjacent lot, the Harris Center for Conservation Education, and Bartlett said the organization is open either to a land swap or a mutually-agreeable eminent domain process where the town would pay for the land.
The additional lot would allow enough room for the fire department to be built, using the existing armory building plus additions.
Bartlett said there are town-owned properties suitable for a land swap, such as 21 acres at Route 136 and Old Greenfield Road, which used to be a sawmill, but the town and the Harris Center have come to no firm agreement yet regarding either piece of land or a potential purchase price.
Selectwoman Barbara Miller said she felt “a little uncomfortable” with not having a specific piece of land or price agreed upon before going to Town Meeting.
“Those are my concerns,” she said.
Ward said he agreed with those concerns, but said the worst-case scenario, if the town was not able to come to favorable terms with the Harris Center, the project would be put off for a year.
Selectwoman Karen Hatcher said since the savings overall were more than enough to offset the cost of purchasing the land.
Bartlett said he expects to have an agreement with the Harris Center completed within six months. The earliest the town would begin renovations on the Department of Public Works garage is April of 2020, so work would not begin before the exchange is complete and the town is assured there is enough space to include the fire department.
The additional land also has sufficient space to eventually include a new police station, to create a functional safety complex, Bartlett said. The Peterborough Master Plan recommends when the police and fire station are relocated, that they be placed in proximity for a combined safety complex.
Selectmen plan to propose an amendment to the warrant article during the open session of Town Meeting to reduce the proposed bond from $4 million to $2.5 million. Voters will be able to speak to the article, amend it and take a final vote during Town Meeting on May 15 at 7 p.m., at the Town House.
Ballot voting is planned to take place on May 14 at the Community Center on 25 Elm Street between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.