The following is my personal opinion as a voter in the Cotuit Fire District and does not reflect the opinion of the Cotuit Fire District’s Board of Water Commissioners. It is offered as one voters editorial opinion about a procedural matter that will come before the District’s voters this weekend.
This Saturday the voters of the Cotuit Fire District will be asked to vote in a special meeting to determine the fate of the former Cotuit Elementary School. The meeting is at 1 pm in the Community Hall of the Cotuit Federated Church located at 40 School Street. Only voters registered to vote in Precinct 7 of the Town of Barnstable are qualified to vote. (I don’t know if non-voters will be admitted to the hall to speak or observe.)
Two articles are on the warrant. The first article on the agenda is to authorize the Cotuit Fire District to spend up to $1.1 million demolish the school. A “yes” vote is a vote to demolish. This article is recommended by the Prudential Committee.
A “no” vote then moves the meeting to consider the second article, which is more or less the same article a majority of the voters approved at the 2021 Annual District Meeting that was held in the gym of the school.
The second article is on the warrant because of a citizen petition circulated by the Cotuit Community Center , a nonprofit group advocating for more time to study possible re-uses of the sixty-nine year-old school and its potential as a village community center. The article asks the Fire District to:
(1) “study the feasibility and estimate the cost of restoring and rehabilitating all or a portion of the former….school….for the use of the District residents, funding a professional analysis of the building for potential reuse and potential recreational and other uses of the grounds…”
(2) Study the cost of demolition of the property and the restoration of the site to a natural state; and
(3) “to hold a Special District Meeting to allow voters to determine the District course of action related to the school property, by request of a Citizen Petition.
A “yes” vote on Article 2 is not a commitment to spend money to renovate the old building. No sum of money is included, just a request to give the school some more time to be professionally studied and inform the district’s voters of the facts, costs, options and possible uses for the structure. A yes vote will cost the district some money next year to maintain the property but it won’t fix any serious problems or repair things like leaky roofs or pay for a new heating system. The Prudential Committee does not recommend this article.
I’m voting “no”on the first article and “yes” on the second .
I feel the Prudential Committee hasn’t followed through with the vote to re-open the district space needs study approved at the 2021 Annual District Meeting.
Article 17 of the 2021 warrant states:
“Upon motion duly made and seconded, the District voted to transfer and appropriate a sum $207,500 from Certified Free Cash to: (1) Re-open and fund the District Space Needs project to include consideration of the School Property at 140 Old Oyster Road comprising the School Building and surrounding 8.5 acres in the Study findings; (2) Define the cost of implementing the recommendations of Space Need study and any other specific use of the School Property as determined by the Prudential Committee and/or its delegates; (3) define the cost of demolishing the School Building and returning the area to a green field; (4) fund the cost of a Special District Meeting to determine the District course of action related to the School Property. Passed by a majority.
The Prudential Committee’s first duty to the district as defined by the By-Laws of the Cotuit Fire District[1], Article V, Section 1 is spend the funds approved by the voters at the Annual District Meeting:
“Section 1: It shall be the duty of the Prudential Committee to insure that funds, raised and/or borrowed by the District, are expended for the purposes set forth in the warrant and articles enacted by the District.
I believe the Prudential Committee is acting in good faith and not trying to “pull a fast one” or “pocket veto” the original vote. There was no reason to reopen an expensive study of the school until the school belonged to the district and the deed was transferred to the town. The transfer took more than two years to complete. The official transfer happened only last fall, so to commission a study before the deal was done would have been imprudent. The three commissioners have stated they have the right to not spend the $207,500 approved by the voters.
The Prudential Committee relied on a five-year old survey of the property that was commissioned by the the town’s asset management committee. Delivered in 2019, the “Habeeb Report” estimated it would cost the town around $4 million estimate to renovate the school back to a school. The demolition estimates the 2021 vote to reopen the Fire District’s space needs study asked for, have been estimated from the Habeeb Report’s estimate and the actual cost of the demolition of the Marstons Mills elementary school last year (around $750,000).
As soon as the school became the property of the Fire District, the Prudential Committee convened a meeting at Freedom Hall to hear proposals for alternative uses of the buildings. The committee asked for budgets and financial plans to support any proposals, but receiving none, decided to recommend demolition, save the $207,500 authorized in 2021 to study future uses of the buildings, and apply that money to the demolition.
On multiple occasions at its monthly public meetings, the committee has rejected repeated requests to commission a new study — not a new assessment of the condition of the building but a full survey of the community to see what the public would like to see happen there and how to pay for it. Such a study would be performed by a professional consulting firm with the experience and insight gained from working on similar situations.
The voters asked for that study in 2021 to gather the facts and sentiments of the residents of Cotuit to help decide the future of the property. This weekend the voters will meet to decide the fate of the school based on a set of outdated facts, incomplete information, and what has been a demo-or-die attitude that the school is too far gone and insignificant to save.
What is a Prudential Committee? The Fire District has three commissions or committees, each with three elected members serving staggered three-year terms: Fire, Water, and Prudential. The responsibility of the Prudential Committee is essentially to be the voice of “prudence” and ensure the best interests of the district’s residents by overseeing the district’s finances with the treasurer, maintain Freedom Hall, and manage the street lights in the village.
The Prudential Committee is recommending demolition, and not fulfilling the request of the voters in 2021 to commission a study, because it believes it has enough information to make an informed decision about the future of the school. I think the grey area in the bylaws about who has the final say on what the district spends — either the voters or the Prudential Committee — comes from Article II, Section 3 of the District By-Laws, under the heading of “Finances”:
“Article II Section 3: No money shall be paid from the treasury of the District, except for the repayment of notes or bonds or other financial obligations incurred as above provided, and interest in same, without the written approval of the Prudential Committee or [emphasis mine] by vote of the district.”
For all I know the Prudential Committee — both present and past — has exercised its discretion to not spend voter allocated funds if they feel they can save the district some money. Just because a warrant article is passed with a specific dollar figure for a project, doesn’t mean that figure has to be spent, in fact one would expect the PruComm to be as frugal and possible and minimize the expenditure of tax dollars if it can negotiate a better deal on a project,
I hope the district’s attorney or someone expert in the nuances of municipal finance and law will explain the discretionary spending power of the PruComm versus the will of the voters expressed by passing a warrant article. I know I’m not the only person mystified as to why 2021’s vote on Article 17 hasn’t been fulfilled despite repeated requests to do so, then I think the District may need to amend its bylaws to clarify the authority of the Prudential Committee to interpret the outcome of a vote on its own and decide whether to fulfill it as discussed, debated and voted by the district at its regular annual meeting or decide to table it, return it to the warrant at the next meeting to ask the voters to cancel it or modify it, etc.
I think the question we need to ask on Saturday isn’t so much to demolish or not demolish the school– but why we are voting on a weekend afternoon in early May and taking time away from painting a boat, jigging for squid, or planting our garden to make a decision that was supposed to be informed by a new professional study approved three years ago by the voters. Yes, that vote three years ago directed the PruComm to call a special meeting to determine the fate of the school, and so the topic has been called out on its own and not included on the warrant for this year’s Annual District Meeting. The timing, the venue, and the rush to spend up to $1 million without the facts the voters asked for seems misguided to me.
Ask yourself if the way this decision is coming to a conclusion feels a bit as if the pro-demolition forces who voted against Article 17 in 2021 have managed to nullify the decision made by a majority three years ago. Ask yourself if you are okay with destroying a substantial building and turning it into a piece of open space because a three-person committee decided the alternatives don’t feel viable enough or within the limited realm of the District’s presently defined purposes — fire services, water, Freedom Hall, streetlights — to even spend the money to study the situation.
I think the question to answer before the decision is made is this : who has the ultimate authority to expend funds? The voters or the Prudential Committee? The acts of the Massachusetts legislature that established the Fire District in 1926 don’t spell out such superseding power to the Prudential Committee [2]. I believe the word “or” in Article II Section 3 of the district by-laws needs to be clarified. “…without the written approval of the Prudential Committee or by vote of the district.”
I am concerned if we rush down the path to demolition at Saturday’s special meeting that we the people will be blessing a dangerous precedent whereby any future warrant article passed by a majority of the District’s voters could be nullified simply through inaction — aka a “pocket veto” — by a future Prudential Committee.
I respect that the purpose of a prudential committee is to apply “prudence” to the governance and budget of the Cotuit Fire District and I respect the judgment of the three members of the current committee. They have —along with the special school subcommittee (of which I was a member) — given a great deal of time and discussion to the future of the school and securing it to first and foremost to protect the district’s drinking water supply (The school is located 800 feet from the well known as “Station 3”).
I know a lot of people want the building torn down and others are upset the town isn’t paying to do so. After initially being in favor of a village/community center, I’m on the fence now and haven’t made up my mind yet because I believe either the school lives on as a vital part of what makes Cotuit the place it is; or it becomes a memory for the hundreds of village residents who were educated there, or, like me, sent their kids there to be educated in the community where they lived. If we hang onto the school it will mean higher taxes. Liability insurance. A new heating system. A new roof. A new septic system. Annual maintenance and utilities. For the district to become a landlord and lease it to some unknown tenant — say a school, non-profit, or business — will mean going to the state legislature to expand the district’s enabling legislation. But once it’s gone it’s gone and I’m concerned a future generation will be asked to fund some unforeseen project that could have been fulfilled by the school and someone will stand up and ask, “What were those fools thinking when they tore down a perfectly good building.”
I recommend the district takes another year and spends up to $35,o00 to maintain the building for a little while longer, and pony up the money to pay for a professional study that considers the future possibilities for the building and offers some creative solutions to making it an asset and not a liability. And please: we must stop letting it deteriorate. It’s a shame how the building has been abandoned and allowed to deteriorate while the deed transfer wound its way through the lawyers and multiple readings by the town council. Volunteered offers to by concerned residents to help clean up the grounds have been denied because the powers that be have deemed the place to be a health hazard and liability.
As I finish my first term as an elected Fire District official and get a first-hand lesson in local government. I’m not editorializing about the school as a water commissioner, but as a resident who has always been a supporter of the Fire District as an important sovereign definition of the village that defines how the village is managed by the villagers participating in the last pure form of participatory democracy we have left. Without a strong district and committed voters who care enough about it to turn out for its election and meetings, who watch the meetings on Zoom, who show up at Freedom Hall to ask questions … then we risk losing our only opportunity to show up and decide for ourselves.
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[1] Bylaws of the Cotuit Fire District : http://www.cotuitfiredistrict.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Official-Cotuit_Fire_District_By_Laws_effective-November-192019.pdf
[2]Enabling Legislation establishing the Cotuit Fire District http://www.cotuitfiredistrict.org/download/prudential/pc-2016/CFD-enabling-legislation.pdf
