Council to eye Fire Station plans

The City Council will get its first glimpse of preliminary plans to renovate and expand the Central Fire Station next week when three designs will be presented to first to the Land and Buildings Committee and then to the full council.

City Manager Eileen Cabanel said yesterday that the estimated costs of the three designs, which Warrenstreet Architects of Concord will submit to the Fire Department today, range from $3.5-million to $3.9-million, not including the $444,000 the city paid to acquire two properties abutting the station.

When the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) Committee ranked the project as its sixth highest priority for the 2008-2009 fiscal year budget, the cost of renovating the station and building an 8,000-square foot, two-story addition was projected at $1.5-million.

After Cabanel recommended and the council decided to purchase an aerial ladder truck for $950,000 in 2008-2009, the CIP committee dropped the fire station project to 23rd among its priorities for the 2009-2010 budget, with a price tag of $2.3-million. And a month later, after meeting with the architects, Cabanel told the council that the estimates had risen to between $3.5-million and $3.9-million.

Last month the City Council included the fire station on its list of projects that will be submitted for funding as part of President-Elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus package.

Cabanel said that it was too soon to determine whether the project would be included in the 2009-2010 budget. She said that the reconstruction of the boardwalk at The Weirs, at a projected cost of $1,450,000, was a high priority. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to share the cost of the project, Cabanel said that the agency has yet to specify the amount of its contribution. At the same time, she said that after the completion of the taxable property revaluation was deferred last year, there would be pressure to include the $500,000 to pursue it in the 2009-2010 budget. "It all depends on our other priorities," Cabanel said of the timing of the fire station project.