Finance - New Fire Station Winthrop

Most of your questions, if not all, can be answered on the website; however, I will go into more detail now. In terms of your first question, why is it needed? I think that is pretty self-evident. I encourage you to take a look at the videos of the existing stations, which are 138 years old and 118 years old, respectively. While [their age] by itself does not make them useless, they do not conform to the vast majority of the standards that come from the state.

Regarding your second point, which is your concern for the businesses, we share those same concerns, and we will be presenting a plan [for] where Meat Market will be going in short order, and from what I understand, they would be very happy with the outcome. As for the other businesses, we are working with each of them to help relocate them, and they have been very receptive to us.

With regards to your third question, [as to] where the money would come from, that is exactly why we have been having these meetings. There will be [a] ballot question on November 7 asking the town for [a] debt exclusion similar to ones that we’ve passed in the last 25 years with each of the three schools along with Miller Field. On the website is a finance tab, which is interactive and enables you to put in the assessed value of your home, and it will show you the exact impact on your taxes. There is also a feature beneath that will show you the impact after two past [debt] exclusions come off the tax rolls. One of them will be coming off the tax rolls before this particular one hits the tax rolls, the other will come off shortly thereafter.

And the last question you had is very similar to this past one. Everyone will have an impact on their taxes. The average assessed house in the Town of Winthrop as of today is $625,000. Based on that average, the average house would have an impact of $456 a year on their taxes. Again, if you use the finance tab on the website, you can put in the exact assessed value of your home, and it will calculate the impact for you.

I hope this answers most of your questions or concerns. Again, always feel free to reach out and call or come to a meeting and ask a question in person. The next meeting is tomorrow night at 6 o'clock at the senior center, and the following Monday night, there will be a public forum at 6 o'clock at the high school [auditorium].

Thank you,

Jim

Hi Paul,
Thank you very much for the question. We have discussed this at multiple meetings and at the most recent council meeting I made a presentation on the old middle school site. But I do want to take a second to explain it to you here because I know many people I don't have the opportunities to catch the meetings because of their busy lives, I'll take the second part of your question first concerning the business is at the watch worth building. We have been this in discussions with most if not all of the businesses and we will be making an announcement very soon about a potential new location for the meat market , which seems to be the business that has drawn the most attention although all of them are equally important to us. It is our plan to find a suitable location for each and every tenant that is willing and wants to relocate. In regards to the Middle School site we have discussed this in detail, but it's been a goal of the town consuls over the past six years to create some sort of revenue stream for the town and stimulus for businesses out of that site. There have been many proposals brought forward, including trying to have a college or community college come to the town and use it as an annex. We have also discussed the possibility of apartments, incubator space for businesses, hotel, open space, among many other things. Over the past 10 months, I've been working on an idea I've had, and finally presented it to the Town and Council at our last meeting. It would consist of entering into a public/private partnership with a company which would build an additional sheet of ice along with a multi functional field house. The town would enter into a lease agreement where we would maintain ownership of the property along with securing used times for all our high school sports that need the facilities along with youth hockey, figure skating, public skating, Other hours advice and other potential uses of the field house. Our partner in this venture would build the facility after we cleared the site, excluding the rink, do some infrastructure work at the site for our town, along with paying the town rent. This potential partner would make money through running multiple different types of tournaments whether it be hockey, pickle, ball, tennis, volleyball, cornhole, tennis, or whatever they may seem viable. This has proven to be a profitable venture for both municipalities and partners throughout the state and has been seen as an incredible stimulus for local businesses.

I would be happy to discuss this in more detail. Anytime you wish I threw a phone call or a meeting. Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Jim

Hi Jim, thank you for your email. I appreciate the questions and thank you for the time it took for you to write it. I will try to enter these in order that you presented them. The first question would be concerning my potential conflict of interest. I can assure you that I reached out to the Mass state, ethics department and to our local town attorney and have received an opinion that I am fine to continue the work I am doing. Not that the fact that I have been friends with the owners of the meat market for over 40 years and the fact that I am as pro business a person as you will find in this town and want no one to feel it should show something about the character that I feel I have the meat market as well as the other businesses in that building have been nothing but good for the Town of Winthrop and will continue to be for a long period of time. We have been since day one looking into possible sites in working with businesses to help secure a proper destination for them, and I can assure you that that will continue.

Your second question concerns the proposal for the Little League field. it was submitted to us with two options. One would be a as you discussed a combined public safety building done all in one phase, and the second approach would give a phased and approach as you are correct in your cost estimate of 37 at the time which was 3 1/2 years ago that was for a smaller building it did not involve any bass for ambulance service the square footage is much smaller than what we are proposing and it did not include any of the foundational cost. They never did any soil samples they never checked. They did not take into consideration the floodplain, and they told that to us at the time of the proposal obviously cost continue to go up between eight and 10% a year and if you look at the phased approach, you could see the difference where they were assuming a second phase would start in 2026 and how the cost was escalated.

Regarding your third question regarding acquisition cost this current project is estimated to be between 35 and $40 million acquisition cost which is included in this number is between 5 1/2 and $6 million. The total cost of this project which again we have been consistent with includes all acquisition cost all construction cost all excavation, demolition furniture, equipment, site, work prep, work foundation, work, and so on and so on.

Your fourth question concerns how much money the town has spent a date on the process including the website. The easy part of that question is the website which is costs us zero. We have had a committee member who has donated his time to do that and to manage the site as far as cost I can tell you over the last 25 years the town has done countless studies regarding the possibility of a new fire house each daddy has been Costing somewhere between 20 and $30,000. This process with Kaestle Boos has been doing work and evaluating sites for the last six years is probably in the $40-$50,000 range including all the sketches, architectural work meetings, discussions presentations and such and your last question I believe revolves around how the town is spending money on educating the taxpayers on the project. We again I'm not telling people how to vote. We are trying to educate him and yes, we are absolutely spending money to educate. The town has is a duty. Any town in the state when they have Townmeeting and articles going before publish everything, Word for Word in the paper, send out mailings, create books, and other materials for the people to become aware of what they would be voting on , this is no different than that. It would be wrong if we were to send out a material or do some sort of advertisement saying vote yes on question one or whatever we would be we are not doing that we have strictly been an informational vessel. There is much and I repeat much miss information that has been going on around the town regarding this project. We are trying to be as transparent as humanly possible and I've had countless meetings countless public forums presentations website Coffee hours and any other vehicle we could use to try to educate the public. We have been trying to be as transparent as possible and answering every question that comes before us in an honest and transparent way.

I honestly do thank you for taking the time to be so thorough in your questions , and as I say to everyone, I am always available to speak with one on one or if you choose to email that is fine too.

Have a great day.
Jim