The defeat of Article 8 at Monday evening’s Special Town Meeting may not have surprised the Housing@Hildreth Committee, but the strong opposition of the Fire Department clearly did. As the debate wore on, committee members asked Fire Chief Rick Sicard to clarify comments made by firefighters past and present in light of what the committee thought was Sicard’s approval of its proposed plan. While some residents voiced opposition for other reasons, “public safety first” was the loud and clear message of the night, and instead of the two-thirds approval the article needed to pass, it received about two-thirds disapproval.
Article 8 asked voters to authorize the sale of two town-owned parcels totaling 3.16 acres to the west of Hildreth House. The land was to be used for a senior housing development, with proceeds going to defray the cost of an addition to the senior center at Hildreth House. One of the parcels, about 0.6 acres, is behind the fire station. The Housing@Hildreth Committee had worked with Sicard during the planning process to address what they thought were his issues with the plan. Sicard voiced approval for the project’s preliminary site plan at a July Planning Board meeting.
Tony Shaw speaks to Article 8. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewitz)
Public safety first
But at Special Town Meeting, Sicard, his firefighters, and other residents voiced concern about town leadership’s lack of support for Sicard’s annual funding requests over the past five years for a feasibility study to refurbish and expand the central fire station to get all of the Fire Department’s equipment under one roof. That study would have also addressed the issue of the station’s location, which requires fire trucks to go through the Town Hall parking lot and cross traffic to and from Hildreth House. Sicard, former Fire Chief Peter Warren, and Fire Department Lt. Tony Shaw each cited that traffic pattern as a public safety issue. “Every day I’m concerned we’re going to have a major incident in front of Town Hall with trucks coming down the hill,” Sicard said, and he added that traffic from the 17 proposed units would add to the danger.
Other Fire Department issues included the lack of parking and storage at the fire station. Shaw said the recent renovation of the Hildreth House driveway had already taken away a large portion of the grassy area where firefighters used to park. He said anywhere from 10 to 25 vehicles might respond to a call, and some of those vehicles are trucks with trailers because firefighters may be at work when the call comes in. “We need more space, not less,” he said.
Shaw was the first speaker to the microphone, and when he was finished presenting his case against the article, he immediately proposed an amendment to remove the fire station parcel from the land to be sold and to add a strip of land from the Hildreth parcel for a new access road to the rear portion of the fire station lot. Town Counsel Mark Lanza told Moderator Bob Eubank that Shaw’s amendment was not in the scope of the article because of the strip of land he was trying to add, so no vote was taken.
Chief Sicard on the spot
After Shaw’s failed amendment, Housing@Hildreth Committee Chairman Rick Maiore asked Sicard to address Shaw’s comments. The chief said his biggest concern is storage and parking, and that the sale of a piece of the fire station’s parcel would limit the possibility of expanding the existing facility.
Chief Rick Sicard.
Billy Salter of Elm Street then asked if the Housing@Hildreth Committee had been coordinating with Sicard. Maiore said, “We didn’t make a move without the approval of the chief.” Sicard responded that although he was at many of the committee’s meetings, he, as fire chief, has to wear two hats. One is fire prevention and making sure fire codes are followed, he said, and in that respect, “all of my concerns were met.” The other, he said, is the fire station itself and taking care of parking and storage needs, “which to this day have not been addressed.”
Shaw returned to the microphone with another amendment to just remove the Fire Department land from the motion. Selectwoman Lucy Wallace said that if that land was removed, three units would be lost from the project and a new appraisal would need to be done. The amendment was defeated.
Meanwhile, other residents spoke in support of the Fire Department’s concerns. Jessie Panek of West Bare Hill Road said that the fire station is “in the wrong place.” Ron Ostberg of Warren Avenue wanted to make sure that the audience was listening to what Sicard was saying, namely that “there’s a problem today, and this is going to make the problem worse.” He added that if the fire station were to move, there would be more land available for this type of project, so the needs of the fire station should be considered before voting on the land sale. Nate Finch of Codman Hill Road added that a no vote would be temporary, while a yes vote would be permanent. Bob Coit of Old Littleton Road said he hoped that this discussion would be instructive for town leadership, which brought a round of applause from voters.
Blindsided
Housing@Hildreth Committee members clearly felt blindsided by the opposition from the Fire Department. Committee member Victor Normand told the audience that the committee involved Sicard in its process, including site walks with the civil engineer who created the site plan. “We reduced the number of units from 20 to 17 to accommodate the Fire Department,” said Normand. He added that the committee offered to move the department’s storage tent closer to the station and provide better access to it from the housing development’s driveway. He argued that the project would not make the Fire Department’s problems any worse, and added that if the housing project were to be postponed, “Many of the seniors who would like to move in here now will go on to God before we ever get to the point where we have something for them.”
Normand asked Sicard to explain why his concerns weren’t voiced to either the committee or the Planning Board prior to Special Town Meeting. Sicard agreed that the committee did work with him to understand his concerns and did make changes to the plan to provide for and improve access to the storage tent. The only negative impact the project would have, said Sicard, is the loss of one parking space and additional traffic in front of the fire station. “My main concern is the future,” he said. “It limits what we can do in that space, even though I don’t think it’s a premium space for a fire station.”
Residents voice additional concerns
Other opposition to the article included the lack of affordable units in the proposed plan, the increased traffic through the Town Hall parking lot, and the wisdom of dedicating 3,000 gallons of the remaining capacity in the sewer system for the project. And although the committee intended the housing units to be moderately priced, Bonnie Heudorfer of Stow Road challenged that concept, saying there is no commonly used definition of “moderately priced.” Nate Finch said that he had heard the units would be priced at around $400,000, which was almost as much as his 2,400-square-foot house.
Peter Warren of Lancaster County Road said that the town should not sell any land in the town center because “we don’t know what the future holds.” He cited the possibility that Harvard may eventually take back part of Devens, and if that happens, the existing Town Hall would not have enough space for the number of employees needed to support both Harvard and Devens. And, as a former fire chief, Warren said that the feasibility study Sicard continues to request should be done before any land is taken away from the Fire Department.
Selectmen postmortem
At Tuesday evening’s Board of Selectmen meeting, the selectmen discussed what the next step should be, if any, for the Housing@Hildreth Committee, which was scheduled to meet Nov. 9. Selectwoman Alice von Loesecke said that Sicard had a good point about the increase in danger from the additional traffic that the housing project would create. But Selectwoman Kara Minar said that the public safety issue already exists, and she cited last year’s Special Town Meeting held in Town Hall that had a capacity crowd. She said that when the Planning Board was working on the overlay district to allow senior housing on that land, there were many public hearings, and this was not an issue that was raised.
All of the selectmen agreed that Sicard was put in a tough position between his firefighters and the housing committee. But Selectwoman Wallace, who is the selectmen liaison to the Housing@Hildreth Committee, was frustrated that Sicard did not express his views when he met with the committee and the Planning Board. “He was here when we voted to surplus the land,” she said. Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro said that the fire chief did send a letter with a long list of concerns after the selectmen’s vote, but Wallace responded that she thought the selectmen had sufficiently addressed those concerns with him.
Minar expressed a fear that this turn of events might jeopardize the expansion of Hildreth House, known as Phase 2, which would have received funding from the sale of the land. “I hope this isn’t viewed as a way to jump the line,” she said. “Are we now going to have to start a conversation about a fire station?”
Wallace added that any group in town that has a need for capital improvements is “terrified” about the proposed new elementary school tying up taxpayer funding for years. Selectman Ken Swanton disagreed: “We’re trying to guess too much,” he said. “We should start the process, ask the chief to be clearer, and bump up his request for a study of the fire station.”
The selectmen agreed that the Housing@Hildreth Committee should keep its scheduled Nov. 9 meeting to discuss what went wrong and recommend what to do next. Wallace said one option might be to remove the fire station parcel from the project, although that would involve modifications to the site plan and a new appraisal, which would cost money. She added that the loss of the fire station parcel would result in fewer units and might make the project infeasible. The selectmen will ask the committee to report its recommendation to them at a future meeting.
