Alna Facilities Planning Committee

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Date: February 19,2008

Time: 07:00 PM - 09:30 PM

Location: Firehouse

Meeting Minutes:

Alna Facilities Planning Committee Public Information Meeting, February 19, 2008, held at the Firehouse at 7 p.m.

Present: Tom Albee (TA), Nick Caristo (NC), Gordon Davis (GD), John Green (JG), Fred Gumkowski (FG), Kathy Pendleton (KP) and Cliff Russell (CR)

Absent:   Brian Lawrence

Also present:   Mike Trask, Roger Whitney and Paul Ouellette and others from the AVFD, plus roughly a dozen Alna citizens___________________________________________

Before the meeting convened, those present were invited to tour the VFD’s equipment bays on the ground floor as a way of getting a feel for what is behind the VFD’s sense of urgency in the matter of space.

During the meeting proper, JG put up the slides of a brief power point presentation outlining the committee’s thinking about:            

• Why we believe something should be done;
• The options for doing something as we have identified them;
• The pros and cons of the several options, focusing especially on building costs and their projected effect on tax bills.

Along the way, questions were invited and quite a few were asked.   Several of these involved potential obstacles to successful renovation and enlargement of the existing firehouse, including:

• The possibility that an elevator would be required by ADA or state codes rules (not the case, according to our contacts at the state level);
• The possibility that installation of the new required dual septic systems would not be feasible in the available space (not likely, given the required sizes of tanks and fields);
• The possibility that the abutter to the south will object to the project (not the case according to our conversations with him);
• The possibility that costs for the project are underestimated because of the expense of lowering the ground floor level to increase ceiling height (not likely according to NC and JG).

There was also a strain of concern that the true net costs of the new firehouse alternative have been overestimated because no explicit allowance has been made for the proceeds from the sale of the existing building.   This is a difficult contention to deal with because of the great uncertainty about what price might be obtainable and what use the purchaser would want to make of the building, in particular, whether the use would conform with existing town codes.   The committee decided to be conservative by not making any guess about these unknowns and so not subtracting a specific number from the estimated gross cost.   (It is worth noting that for the new firehouse project to show up as cheaper after some allowance for a sale, the net sale proceeds would have to be in excess of $300,000.)

At several points, members of the VFD (or their family members) made statements in opposition to the renovation/enlargement project and in favor of the new stand-alone firehouse option.

The meeting adjourned at 9 p.m. After adjournment, the committee agreed to meet again the 26^th of February and 7 p.m.

Cliff Russell