In the face of an increase in calls to the Ambulance Service over the past five years, Will Stevenson, acting director, is requesting that the town merge the Ambulance Service with the Fire Department. Stevenson presented his case at the May 23 Select Board meeting, and Fire Chief Rick Sicard, also in attendance, said his department supported the merger.
The goal over the next 10 years, according to Stevenson, is to hire enough full-time employees to staff the ambulance and fire departments 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Combining the departments would simplify the hiring process and reporting hierarchy for the new employees, who would need to be certified as both firefighters and emergency medical technicians.
Stevenson said the eventual move to full-time staff is necessary because of the shortage of available volunteers. Ideally, he said, volunteers would live in town and not work outside of town, so that the Ambulance Service can meet its response-time goals. Those goals are to leave the station within 5 minutes, to arrive on the scene within 10 minutes, and to get to a hospital within 15 minutes of the time of the call. Stevenson said 85% of the EMTs who joined in the last few years live outside Harvard.
The town currently has two full-time firefighter-
EMTs. Stevenson said eight to 10 would be needed to staff both services 24/7. He said the combined department staff would continue to be augmented by volunteers and added that volunteer firefighters would not be required to attain certification as EMTs and vice versa.
The merger of the two departments was one of the recommendations made in the 2016 operations and management analysis report done by the Edward Collins Jr. Center for Public Management. The report said that the Ambulance Service should be “more integrated with town government,” and that its relationship with the Fire Department was “strained.” While a merger would alleviate those problems, the report cautioned that it would have to be planned carefully to address issues involving management and the volunteer model culture, which it said should be maintained.
New building dilemma
Sicard and Stevenson said a combined department that is staffed 24 hours a day would require a larger station with areas for sleeping and eating. A new fire station is on the capital plan for 2026, and a feasibility study, which included a conceptual design and estimated cost for a new station, was done in 2020. The estimate for a fire station only, with living quarters, was about $17.7 million, assuming a 2021 construction date.
Last year, the Permanent Building Committee asked Sicard to get an estimate for a station with no living quarters. By the time that estimate was done, prices had gone up, and the new estimate was even higher than the old one—more than $18 million. Both Sicard and Stevenson told the board it would be foolish to build a new station with no living quarters and expect it to last 50 years.
The 2020 estimate did not include purchasing a new site. Instead, the design called for using the parcel of land behind the station, which the town already owns. That land, according to Sicard, is “a big rock,” and he said architects at Kaestle Boos Associates estimated it would take about $1.6 million just to make it suitable to build on. Sicard said there is a parcel of land across from the Hillside Garage on Ayer Road that is currently for sale at $750,000, and it would be large enough to support a new fire and ambulance building.
But Town Administrator Tim Bragan pointed out that the town cannot simply purchase land; it must go through the procurement process. In addition, voters would have to agree to fund the land purchase, which would imply they would eventually approve funding for a new building. Meanwhile, the parcel of land on Ayer Road might be sold, forcing the town to find another suitable parcel close to town center. Select Board member Erin McBee spoke for everyone when she said, “This is going to be hard.”
At the June 6 Select Board meeting, Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro asked the board if it wanted the Permanent Building Committee and the Fire Department to work together on criteria for a new building site. She said the committee could also put out nonbinding questionnaires to parcels of interest as they did for the new senior center. The board agreed the Permanent Building Committee and Fire Department should move ahead with that plan.
