Frustrated. Disappointed. Blindsided. Those were some of the words used by Housing@Hildreth Committee members to describe the Fire Department’s objections to Article 8, which asked the Nov. 6 Special Town Meeting to authorize selling two parcels of land, including some land behind the fire station. But in an Aug. 10 email to town officials, Fire Chief Rick Sicard had requested both parcels of land for possible expansion of the fire station, and committee members were aware of that request.
In addition, a long debate at last year’s Special Town Meeting over including fire station land in the housing overlay district, coupled with Sicard’s repeated capital requests for a feasibility study on the fire station—denied for the past four years—provided clear evidence that the department wants to have a solution to its storage and parking problems before giving up 0.68 acres of land behind the station.
The chief’s August email was a response to an earlier email from Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro to all departments asking if any of them had a use for the 3.16 acres in the new overlay district slated for senior housing. Sicard’s response outlined the lack of parking and storage at the fire station, and it discussed the need for consolidating all the department’s vehicles and equipment, currently housed in three locations, under one roof. It gave several examples of how those problems could translate to delays in response time as well as building upkeep inefficiencies. Sicard’s email was received by Sobalvarro and Town Administrator Tim Bragan, and Sobalvarro told the Press the email was also forwarded to the Board of Selectmen. (For the complete text of Sobalvarro’s request and Sicard’s response, see “A letter to Town Hall.” )
The ask
On Aug. 11, the day after Sicard sent the email, the Housing@Hildreth Committee held a scheduled meeting, and Sobalvarro informed the five members present of Sicard’s request. According to the minutes of the meeting, the committee was “quite surprised and concerned by this late development.” The committee agreed that Bragan should meet with the chief to discuss his issues. Selectwoman Lucy Wallace, liaison to the committee, asked if the selectmen might be able to override Sicard’s request. Sobalvarro said she would talk to the inspector general’s office about it, and she told the Press that she did check and was told the town could override Sicard’s request.
This week Sicard told the Press that when he met with Bragan in August, he maintained the position stated in his email. But, Sicard said, “the board was going to do whatever it wanted.” The chief added that he and Bragan did discuss the possibility of creating a few more parking spaces on the left side of the fire station, but he never said he would go along with the land being sold. He also said that he “never heard one comment” from any of the Housing@Hildreth Committee members regarding his email. Although the email was discussed at the committee’s Aug. 11 meeting, committee Chairman Rick Maiore told the Press that neither he nor the other members of the committee ever saw its contents.
The refusal
At an Aug. 22 selectmen’s meeting, the selectmen discussed the chief’s email before their vote on declaring the land surplus. The discussion lasted less than two minutes. Bragan explained that Sicard had requested the land to make it known that he has been trying for four years to get a study done on the fire station, and that he couldn’t know what his department’s needs for the land would be without that study. Bragan added that Sicard was also concerned about the number of parking spaces lost when the new Hildreth House driveway went in and a drainage trench was dug next to it, eliminating the grassy strip where firefighters had parked. But, Bragan said, Sicard “totally expected the board would continue to surplus the property.” Selectman Ken Swanton asked Bragan, “So he does not object to surplussing it?” Bragan shook his head no. Wallace said, “He confirmed that, correct?” Bragan said yes. Wallace also asked, “Are we going to solve the parking issue?” Bragan said yes. The board voted unanimously to declare the land surplus.
Ghosts of meetings past
Sicard’s August email was not the first time the need to expand the fire station has been brought up. The town’s Master Plan, updated in 2016, states that the fire station “will require modernization and expansion in order to accommodate the recent acquisition of new fire vehicles.” And this will be the fifth year that Sicard has submitted a $20,000 capital request for a feasibility study to determine if the fire station could be expanded. His past requests were all denied by either the selectmen or the Capital Planning and Investment Committee (CPIC) for a variety of reasons (see “The five-year quest” below).
At a 2016 Special Town Meeting (STM) when the town voted to create the overlay district from the Hildreth House and fire station land parcels, former Fire Chief Peter Warren spoke about Sicard’s multiple attempts to fund a feasibility study on the fire station. He mentioned not just the equipment storage issue, but other storage issues inside the building such as the files and supplies clogging the chief’s office, the bunkroom, and the hallway between the two. He offered an amendment that would have removed the fire station parcel from the overlay district. The Planning Board did not support the amendment, and Wallace also spoke against it, not as a selectwoman, but as a resident. Swanton, also speaking for himself, supported it.
The amendment was defeated, and Paul Green of Old Littleton Road moved to pass over the article because “it would benefit from more discussion between various boards and informed citizens in town.” Planning Board member Kara Minar argued that her board had already held three public meetings about the overlay district, although at one of those hearings held just six days before STM, Town Planner Bill Scanlan told a resident concerned about the inclusion of the fire station parcel that “we haven’t decided if we want to include it yet,” and Planning Board member Michelle Catalina added, “Ideally it would not need to be used at all.” That same week, Sicard told the Press he could not support the inclusion of the fire station parcel in the overlay district unless his space and parking needs were met. Green’s motion to pass over the article was defeated, and the article passed.
Once again into the fray
This year, on Oct. 17, Sicard went before the selectmen to discuss his capital requests, which once again included a feasibility study to expand the station. Selectwoman Kara Minar questioned the wisdom of the study, noting that if the land behind the station were sold, it would limit expansion. But the selectmen agreed the study would be useful to answer whether the station should stay where it is and what it would take to make it work there. Soon afterward, the Nov. 6 Special Town Meeting voted against authorizing the town to sell the two parcels of land.
This week, at a Nov. 13 CPIC meeting, Sicard met with the committee to discuss his latest request for a feasibility study of the fire station. He reported that since submitting the request, a possible location for a new station had come up, so the study would include an investigation of that location. The committee wanted to be sure the scope of the study would be sufficient, and Selectwoman Alice von Loesecke said she would discuss the scope with the selectmen, including what effect a possible merger with Devens might have. Von Loesecke said she would report back to the committee.
Sicard told the Press this week he did meet once with Bragan to discuss possible parking solutions at the fire station. He said they talked about paving an area on the left side of the station, which would require some fill to be brought in. Bragan confirmed that discussion and said that it is on a list of projects that the Department of Public Works could be asked to do, provided the project wouldn’t increase runoff to abutter properties. He said the number of spaces gained would be eight or nine. Sicard said that would help the parking situation but wouldn’t solve it.
Not enough attention paid to email?
Sicard’s email was brought up once again at the Nov. 14 selectmen’s meeting when Rick Maiore, chairman of the Housing@Hildreth Committee, was discussing his group’s proposal to move forward with the senior housing project without the land from the fire station parcel (see Housing@Hildreth will press on, page 1). Maiore told the board that he had spoken with members of the Harvard Firefighters Association, a nonprofit fundraising organization composed of firefighters, and it did not oppose the housing project. He added that he thought Fire Department Lt. Tony Shaw was acting as an individual when he spoke out against the land sale at Special Town Meeting, not as an association member. Maiore said the housing committee will invite the association to its meetings to identify Fire Department needs. Swanton questioned the exclusion of Sicard, to which Minar and Wallace replied that Sicard had been included in Housing@Hildreth’s process all along.
But Swanton referenced Sicard’s email objecting to the land sale, and Wallace said, “We considered his objection and voted to surplus the land.” Swanton said he didn’t remember hearing about the chief’s objection, to which Bragan replied that the selectmen all received a copy of the chief’s email in their packets the day of the selectmen’s meeting, to which Wallace added, “Two weeks after it was sent.” Swanton pressed for the inclusion of the chief in Housing@Hildreth’s meetings, and Maiore agreed to include him.
The five-year quest for a $20,000 feasibility study
Fire Chief Rick Sicard’s request for a study of Harvard’s central fire station is not new. Following is a timeline of those requests, most of which never made it past the selectmen to the Capital Planning and Investment Committee (CPIC).
Fiscal 2015: Fire Chief Rick Sicard met with CPIC to request $20,000 for a feasibility study for the fire station. In initial discussions, members said the study had value, but in the end, they voted 4–1 to deny the request because its rating, calculated by points that CPIC members assign to projects, was too low.
Fiscal 2016: During a review of a list of capital requests, the selectmen voted unanimously to remove the chief’s request for a feasibility study, as well as a request for $750,000 for “refurbishing” the fire station.
Fiscal 2017: The selectmen once again removed the chief’s request for study and a building project to expand the fire station.
Fiscal 2018: Selectman Ron Ricci suggested “holding off on the study to repair the building until we are beyond the school project,” saying that the study should be done closer to when the renovation might be done. The selectmen removed the request and said they would wait until the Collins Center for Public Management audit of the fire and ambulance departments was done before making a final decision. The audit, completed six months later, did not address the fire station facility or location.
Request for fiscal 2019: The majority of selectmen agreed the feasibility study would provide useful information, and this week Sicard went before CPIC, where members commented that recent events had shed more light on the need for the study. Chairwoman SusanMary Redinger said, “Something needs to be done.”
Note: In June 1974, an article to build a two-story station where the current fire station is located was voted down by Special Town Meeting. The Fire Station Building Committee reported that “the general tenor of the meeting indicated that the cost of the building, estimated to be $350,000, was too high and should be reduced.” The architect was directed to redesign the station with “just the essentials.” In November that same year, Special Town Meeting voted to approve funding for a one-story fire station estimated to cost $300,000. This week Sicard told the Press that a second floor would allow offices to be moved upstairs, and that might provide enough space for the department’s current equipment.
A letter to Town Hall
On July 11, Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro sent the following email to town departments:
Please let me know within the next 30 days if your department has a use for the following sub-parcels totaling 3.16 acres:
- 0.68 acres of the 11 Elm St. Parcel, Harvard Fire Department (current parcel = 1.60 ac)
- 2.48 acres of the 15 Elm St. Parcel, Hildreth House (current parcel = 5.66 ac)
On Aug. 10, Fire Chief Rick Sicard emailed the following response:
Hi Marie,
Please consider this email as official notification that the Fire Department is interested in these parcels of surplus land on Elm Street. Currently the Fire Department has equipment stored in three locations throughout the town within four different buildings. For the streamlining of operations and reduction of buildings to upkeep (electricity, heating, alarm monitoring, general maintenance, etc.) we would eventually like to get all of this equipment in one location.
An example of streamlining our operations is to help reduce our response times to emergencies. Right now if we get an emergency call that requires the response of our boat, our firefighters will park their personal vehicle at the center fire station, walk down to the lower fire station behind Town Hall, get our forestry vehicle, drive back up to behind the central fire station to where the boat is stored (in the hoop house behind the station) and hook up to the boat. Once this has been completed, we can now respond to the station. This is all valuable time wasted in order to respond to someone who is involved in a water emergency. If the brush truck and boat were in one location all we would have to do is respond to the station, hook the boat up to the forestry truck and respond to the emergency.
Another example is we don’t always know who is responding to an emergency call and to which station they are responding to. Sometimes all responders have responded to the center fire station when we need the engine from the Still River Fire Station to respond. Someone who is at the Center Fire Station will have to get back in their vehicle and drive to the Still River Station in order to have the appropriate vehicle respond to the emergency. Again, this is wasting valuable time.
Another major issue we have at our Central Fire Station is parking. Right now there are no designated parking spots and it is very challenging for responding members to park their vehicles when responding to an emergency. The only possibly option for additional parking is on this land.
For the past four years Fire Department has requested a feasibility study be conducted on the Central Fire Station to see what would be needed to have all our apparatus in one location. Even without the study, it is easy to see that the current location cannot handle this. Some sort of expansion would be needed which more than likely would require more land. Losing the additional land behind the station would take away the option of expanding at this current location.
Respectfully submitted,
Rick Sicard, Fire Chief
