Towns should help pay for Bristol’s ‘regional’ services

To The Daily Sun,

At the Bristol Special Town Meeting to consider the purchase of the new town office building, I suggested that we continue to study what the “needs” of the town actually were. That suggestion was soundly rejected by the voters.

What we will see now is that the fire and police departments are still in the search of new and updated facilities. The fire department will justify those facilities on the grounds of increased calls and the need for larger garage stalls to accommodate the increased size of new ambulances. The increase in calls, both fire and police, comes not from an increase in population in Bristol but rather an increase in calls from the “service area”.

The construction of a new safety service building based on an increase in calls servicing towns other than Bristol would be unsustainable and extremely unfair to the taxpayers of Bristol. If the communities reaping the benefits of an expanded new facility were willing to contribute to the capital costs of that facility, I would feel differently.

We, the taxpayers of Bristol, are currently providing “regional” services to our neighboring communities without the benefit of regional financial support.

Paul Simard

Bristol