The town of Brewster began talking at earnest about a new fire station more than a decade
ago.
And this February, the town broke ground on the new $13.4 million fire rescue headquarters
project.
Excellent.
Thank you very much, Chief.
I just want to thank everyone for coming.
This is a great event.
It's a historic day in our town.
This is a project as I will underestimate the number of years, but that has been something
like 20 years in the making in terms of when the idea for what our next firehouse should
be first came up.
And over the years, it's taken a lot of effort by a lot of people on the board of select
men in the fire department and elsewhere, the building's needs committee, et cetera.
But I can say, having been part of this process for the last six years, that this has been
an exercise in democracy.
With the select board, public safety officials, town officials, and architect, builder, and
planner representatives on hand, the group literally put shovel into sand to formally
kick off the building construction, which got a green light from town voters in December
of 2015.
It was about 15 years ago this effort started, went through a variety of failed votes at
town meeting, and there were many, many meetings with the community, finance committee, boards
of select men and volunteers to find out what the community really wanted in a fire station.
Over the past decade and a half, opponents of the project had argued against its expense,
but proponents successfully countered that the new headquarters had been long needed
to replace the aging 1974 building and to support the current needs of the town.
It's no longer a small, sparsely populated Cape Town.
It's grown, the needs of the department have grown, and this is, I think, going to be a
shining addition to town buildings.
It's going to be extremely functional, and I think something that the community can
be proud in, and certainly the men and women of the department are going to be proud of.
It's like to thank everybody.
I mean, I don't want to go through the whole list.
You've heard everybody today, but I can't thank the town, the voters, everybody present
today, anybody who worked on this.
I will say that I'm very proud to be the chief of the Brewster Fire Department.
I have great personnel.
They will be afforded a facility that they'll be able to work out of safely and effectively
for the next 40 or 50 years.
They just returned from their fourth rescue, removing an individual who was trapped on
a roof of a building with our aerial ladder.
What they do on a day-in, day-out basis, nobody really hears of.
I see it every day, and I'm very proud to be their boss and their leader, and I thank
them very much.
The new station, now under construction just behind the existing Main Street Route 6A building,
should be completed in 2018 and will provide needed infrastructure to support the town's
firefighting and rescue operations.
During construction, the town acknowledges there will be the occasional impact on 6A,
although town administrator Mike Embry said communication planning, along with pre-planned
timing of the movement of large trucks, should minimize any disruption.
What people will see within the next two weeks, a couple of the back buildings that used
to house the thrift shop as well as the Department of Natural Resources vehicles, those will
be demolished.
We'll see some site work beginning with the asphalt being torn up.
There is fencing up to keep the construction vehicles away from the council on aging folks
next door.
What we're going to attempt to do as there are major occurrences in the project to get
the information in the local newspapers, to have it posted on the town website, Facebook
page, there may be days when we're going to require a police officer to be out there for
traffic control.
There are very large steel members to this building and in order for the trucks to make
that kind of a turn in, there's going to be the need to stop traffic so that they can
maneuver and get in safely.
The town is now looking ahead to a dedication ceremony and opening of the new fire station
in May 2018.
And so I think when we get to the end of this process, it's going to be something which
the town can really be proud of and know that this was the town's project and this is the
town's fire station.
We've done a lot of work in town with infrastructure of a variety of departments and this is a
really important facet of that.
I'm so glad to see this often running and it is one that the town will be very proud
of for a long time.
Thank you.
