STM tonight – my top 10 reasons

The Special town meeting (STM) takes place this evening at the MHS gym at 7:30 PM to decide upon:

1. The new public safety building; and
2. A solar photovoltaic array next to the Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Top ten reasons that I favor the new public safety building:

1. The new public safety building has been designed and vetted by the Building Committee right from the very beginning.
2. The Building Committee is comprised of a group of extremely knowledgeable,  talented and diligent people.
3. As a result of my attending many of the Building Committee’s meetings, I have come to trust the judgment of the Building Committee, and to feel secure with what they recommend.
4. The public safety building has been designed with specific input from both chiefs, to meet both current and future needs of police and fire.
5. I do not have the expertise to question whether the size and build out of the public safety building is appropriate, but I have faith in those who have vetted the design.
6. There are extra spaces designed into the public safety building to accommodate future growth, but it is not of such an amount as to me to make the total design questionable, even if one were to disagree with those assumptions about future needs.
7. The marginal costs of those extra spaces designed into the public safety building is not substantial when compared to the cost of the building without that space.
8. Alternately, it would be extremely costly to have to add onto the public safety building later if we designed it too small now.
9. The town has asked the police and fire to work in substandard space for too long.
10. The police and fire have been exceedingly gracious about accommodating the town need to postpone any consideration of a new facility for them for many years beyond the time when we knew the current facilities needed to be replaced.