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Cohasset committees back revised public safety facility plan and prepare $20.8 million debt-exclusion request
Summary
A joint meeting of Cohasset committees reviewed a revised police-and-public-safety facility for the 3A/King Street site, with a projected cost of $26.77 million and a planned debt-exclusion request of $20,765,845 at Annual Town Meeting; officials also signaled a $150,000 capital request for Elm Street schematic design.
Cohasset officials on March 19 reviewed a revised plan for a combined police and public safety facility on the 3A/King Street site and signaled they will seek a $20,765,845 debt exclusion at Annual Town Meeting to cover the project after applying $6 million in prior appropriation.
Glenn Pratt, chair of the town’s Public Safety Facilities Committee, told the joint meeting of the Capital Budget Committee, Select Board and Advisory Committee that the committee evaluated multiple alternatives over six months and concluded the current proposal meets the Police Department’s future needs while providing room to expand the Fire Department in the future. Pratt said the proposal would cost the median property owner — an assessed value of about $1 million — roughly $520 per year in additional taxes.
Dan Pallotta of Project Planning Professionals presented the site plan, describing garage bays oriented to King Street, a north addition that includes a detention wing and sally port for detainee processing, a new driveway and parking area behind the building, and relocated utilities with a generator sited nearby. Pallotta said the portion of the plan originally intended to be a fire station will be built out as a garage now but designed so a future fire station could be incorporated more easily.
Paula Claridge of HKT Architects reviewed floor plans, saying the first floor will house office space and a large Training/Community room that also will serve as the town’s Emergency Operations Center; the north addition will include detention, a sally port and vehicle/evidence-processing bays. Claridge described second-floor space for police operations, evidence storage, roll call and locker rooms, with mechanical and electrical systems located above the garage.
The project’s total projected cost is $26,765,845. With $6 million available from a prior appropriation, the project team said the town would present a debt-exclusion request of $20,765,845 at Annual Town Meeting. Project presenters compared that figure with an earlier full-build estimate of $28,399,000 and an alternate that would omit building a fire station foundation, which they estimated at $24,970,000.
Officials emphasized schedule dependencies: any modifications to the existing Elm Street complex cannot begin until the King Street work is completed, a sequence that project staff estimated will take at least two years and makes the Elm Street project cost difficult to predict. Committee members requested a follow-up estimate of the new facility’s additional operating costs to present a fuller lifecycle picture.
Separately, the Capital Budget Committee said it will request $150,000 this year to fund programming and schematic design for the Elm Street project. No formal town vote on the King Street debt exclusion or on Elm Street design funding was taken at the March 19 meeting; the meeting adjourned at 9:07 p.m. on a 5–0 roll-call vote.
Next steps: project staff will provide operating-cost estimates and continue design work ahead of the debt-exclusion proposal at Annual Town Meeting; the Capital Budget Committee will submit a $150,000 request for Elm Street programming and schematic design.
