Selectmen to Decide on Police Station Wednesday

The Swampscott Board of Selectmen met for nearly three hours Thursday night in a joint session with members of the Finance Committee, Capital Improvements Committee, and Police Station Building Committee, to discuss the Police Station Building project and options for financing it.

The end result of the meeting is that Selectmen will discuss the police station and the town-owned Greenwood and Temple properties at Wednesday night’s meeting and make a decision about how to move the police station project forward.

Other interested parties who were at the table at Swampscott High School Thursday night included Town Moderator Joe Markarian, Police Chief Ron Madigan, several former Finance Committee Chairmen and organizers of the Say Yes to the Police Station Campaign.

Say Yes tried unsuccessfully last year to get a debt-exclusion question passed to fund a new station.

Town Administrator Andrew Maylor, Treasurer Denise Dembkoski and Town Accountant Dave Castellarin were also in attendance.

All of those in attendance agreed that a new police station is needed in Swampscott, and no one spoke against the project or even against the proposed location on Humphrey Street.

However, when the discussion moved to how the community should fund the construction of a new station, it soon became apparent that not everyone is on the same page.

Moderator Markarian presented the committees with a spreadsheet he had developed with the help of current Finance Committee Chairman Michael McClung and the Finance Committee, that provided the boards and committees with two options for financing the construction project.

The first option proposed and discussed at length was referred to by Markarian as a “Note Strategy,” by which the town, through several votes of Town Meeting and the sale of the Greenwood and Temple properties, could seek to borrow the money from the project and pay all of the debt “within the levy” and without going to voters to ask for a debt-exclusion question.

During the course of the discussion about the ‘note strategy’ its proponents, Markarian and former Finance Committee Chairman Jerry Perry, agreed that the strategy was more risky than a debt-exclusion question, because it depends upon assumptions about the amounts of revenues that could be raised through new taxes, such as a local meals tax and the sale of the property.

As risky as the note strategy may be from a financing standpoint, a vote of Town Meeting would allow the project to move forward and it would be up to the town’s elected and appointed leaders to make sure the strategy worked.

If either of those assumptions made in the note strategy end up being wrong, the town would be forced to either pay the higher principle and interest payments from within the town’s operating budget - putting local services at risk - or extend the debt out further and incur additional interest, raising the total cost of the project.

The town manager argued at length against the note strategy, saying that his job is “to defend the budget” and the note strategy would put the town’s operational budget at risk.

The second proposal was to put the question back before the voters for another debt-exclusion vote, that many in the room felt will not pass.

After much discussion about the two options Selectmen Chairwoman Jill Sullivan said that even her board, “is not of a mind” on how best to proceed and suggested that there may be a compromise with a smaller debt-exclusion question going to the ballot combined with a strategy for keeping more of the costs within the budget.

The discussion was heated at times, as each of the parties at the table made their case for the approach they felt would be most likely to result in the construction of a new police station.

Still, after three hours of debate among residents, volunteers and employees, the only thing that is clear is that this issue will get still more discussion in the weeks and months ahead.