Public Safety Building Team Message on the Cost of Municipal Construction

The Public Safety Building Team realizes that many residents are surprised at the proposed cost of the new building that will house police, fire, and EMS. We will use this letter to explain the extra costs involved with municipal construction and then to delve into the various components of this project’s cost.

In Massachusetts, any public project using public funds must pay prevailing wage. The Massachusetts Department of Labor Standards sets the Prevailing Rates. There are 3 sets of rates for the entire state (eastern, central and west). The rates are set at the time of bidding and are set for a twelve-month period. Studies have shown that labor agreement similar to the required Massachusetts Prevailing Wage increase costs approximately 22% over private construction. Without a very generous benefactor, there is no way around prevailing wage law.

Massachusetts General Law requires that an Owner’s Project Manager (OPM) be contracted for any public building project where services are estimated to exceed $1.5 million. The OPM provides project management guidance throughout the life of a public project. Basically, the OPM is there to make sure the best interests of the municipality are served. The estimate for OPM services for this project is $300k.

Massachusetts General Law requires all new and renovated buildings over 7,500 sq. ft. to be protected by an automatic fire protection system (sprinklers). For our building, that involves not just the sprinklers piping and sprinkler heads, but also includes a generator, fire pump and water storage tanks to hold approximately 40,000 gallons to protect the building and equipment. The estimate for fire suppression for this project is $256k.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) regulates components of police stations where a detainee will be processed and held. This applies to the holding area and the cells. The regulations are geared toward ensuring the safety of detainees and officers. Everything from the size of the rooms, ventilation requirements, construction materials, types of light fixtures, speakers, cameras, plumbing fixtures and even down to the paint colors in the rooms is regulated by DPH.

The National Fire Protection Association and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health dictate aspects of our Fire/EMS facility. For example, there is a recommended distance between vehicles to prevent accidents. We need to separate the “dirty” side of the facility (where the trucks and fire fighters enter after an event) from the “clean” side. The means that we need to clean the contaminated gear and then put it in clean storage. We have to have bunk rooms, the kitchen, offices, fitness room and other spaces separated by doors from the contaminated areas. We can’t take air that is around 50 degrees in the apparatus bays and send it through a heat pump to provide heat in the office areas.

The Massachusetts Architectural Access Board has issued regulations in order to make public buildings and facilities accessible to, functional for, and safe for use by persons with disabilities. In our case, they dictate that to reuse the front part of the Princeton Center School, we would need to add a four-stop elevator. They control parking spaces, door openers, lighting, security, holding cells, restrooms, kitchens, etc. The four-stop elevator adds approximately $500k to the cost of Option C (re-using part of the Center School).

Taxpayers will be asked to fund design and construction documents at Town Meeting in May. The expected cost of these documents for Option B, an all-new building, is approximately $850 thousand. This will pay to bring the existing conceptual designs to their final state and to have construction plans developed. We know the spaces we need, approximately where they should be, and about how large the building will be. We know approximately where it will sit on the lot. The final phase of design is to add the elements that make the building work. Which heating system(s) will be used and how does it affect the building? Where exactly are tanks, generators, pumps? What is the building going to look like on the outside? Can we squeeze in more parking? Will the apparatus bays look like a residential garage or more like a barn? Which way will the ridgeline run? What types of windows and doors will be used? Will there be dormers? Skylights?

The construction documents translate the design documents into plans for those who are building the Public Safety building. There are foundation plans, electrical plans, plumbing plans, framing plans, elevation plans etc. which must be developed.

The State’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) sets the architectural and engineering fees for their state projects. It is the standard that most Cities and Towns use for their projects as well. What it doesn’t include is the OPM (approximately $300k) and any legal fees (estimated at $20k) to set up the bid documents. It also doesn’t include specialty services, specialty engineering and permitting. The $1.2 million in the cost projection for professional fees aligns very closely with these numbers. We are asking for $850k of the $1.2 million at this time since the bidding, construction administration and part of the OPM fees don’t need to be spent until after the design and construction documents have been completed.

The actual building and site construction costs are estimated at approximately $9.7 million for Option B (all new building). This equates to $625/sq. ft. This is in line with costs seen in Charlton ($707), Holden ($579), and Lennox ($870), particularly when you consider that we need to demolish an old building and worry about hazardous waste abatement. Ashburnham and Paxton were built in 2008 before the revised building code (particularly the stricter energy code) and used more industrial looking pre-packaged apparatus bays but were at $430 and $280 per square foot respectively.  

Option B, the all-new building, is projected to increase taxes on the average home (a home assessed at $400k today) by $419 per year. This is $8 a week or $1.15 a day.

The Public Safety Building Team asks for your support at Town Meeting. If you have any questions about this letter or anything else related to the new building, please contact us. If you would like to tour the existing building, the Police and Fire Chiefs are happy to help.

We look forward to hearing from you.