Our issues at Special Town Meeting (November 3, 2025 at 7pm at the High School)

Article (# TBD) – Capital Improvement Projects – Public Safety Building at 135 King Street – VOTE NO

1. The building is too large for our town’s needs – we would be oversized by 40% compared to other town public safety facility sizes (Norwell, Scituate, Duxbury)

2. The building has redundant spaces – police bays for maintenance and evidence storage already exist at 62 Elm Street, we already have two other town data centers, we already have public meeting space at Willcutt Commons, Library, and Schools, the police have used the school gym and promised to keep using it when this was proposed – but added one to this building.

3. The building has unnecessary space – Locker rooms are designed for 37 people but we have 18 police officers and 3 sergeants – which is already more than our peer towns. The public meeting space drives a requirement for public bathrooms, which can be removed if the meeting space is removed. The building has a 750 square feet gym despite saying they wouldn’t during the approval. 

4. The building doesn’t do what we were told it would – the fire department only has staffing for one ambulance team so adding the satellite station cannot decrease response times because they can’t staff both locations (unless they will look to increase staff in the future, which they promised they would not as part of this process), and despite average response times shown decreasing – the largest portion of that decrease is along 3A with North Cohasset and Beechwood showing nearly no decreases. 

5. The cost doesn’t include 62 Elm Street – which will require renovation to accommodate the fire headquarters once the police move out. 

6. The town’s leadership misled us – both in budget and design, saying they had $8 million guardrails and listing off scope this wouldn’t have like a gym, extensive sitework, police bays.