New Town Office / Community Center / Fire Station Project

The Town Office building, located at 16 Beech Hill Road, has served the Town of Northport since the 1930’s. In the early 1990’s, the one-story building was raised and a first floor was added underneath to increase space. Since then, many problems with the building have arisen. The Beech Hill Fire Station was built in 2003. While the fire station building is sound, upgrades will improve environmental & safety conditions and the capability of our volunteer fire and emergency crew.

Northport’s population grew by more than 50% between the 1980s and 2024 and municipal mandates required by the State are increasing. The Town has outgrown the space. Storage space and space for public meetings and for conducting elections are inadequate. Two-by-four construction and poor insulation make the building inefficient and uncomfortable to heat and cool. There is an inadequate filtration system for drinking water, which has unsafe levels of arsenic. Public offices on the second floor do not meet ADA accessibility requirements for a public building because there is no elevator, and the only access to the Town’s finance, code enforcement, and administrator’s offices is by stairway. In 2018, and confirmed again in 2024, engineering studies found the Town Office building to be structurally compromised. As a result, the Town’s insurance company limited insurance coverage on the building in the summer of 2024. It has become clear that addressing these limitations and risks can no longer be put off. 

As early as 2012 the Select Board began to acknowledge the likely need for a new building in Northport’s future. 

2017-2022 Following the 2018 engineer’s report, the Select Board began the process of exploring options for updating the town office building. The Select Board considered renovating the existing building, building a new structure elsewhere on the site, and building a new office that connected to the existing fire station. Because the estimated costs for each option were similar, and only the combined town office and fire station addressed all the shortcomings, the Board decided to pursue that plan. Preliminary plans were drafted for sharing in a town meeting in early 2020, but when Covid hit, that meeting couldn’t happen. The project was put on hold during the pandemic.

2022-2024 The Select Board revived planning for a new building in 2022 and reviewed all the earlier proposals.The Board also considered proceeding in phases, but ultimately rejected that approach as impractical. Preliminary plans were drafted for a new structure attached to the Fire Station with a room large enough to hold the annual Town Meeting. The Town applied for and was approved for a $2.3 million earmark from Congress, pending passage of the 2025 federal budget. 

May & June, 2024  After presentation of the preliminary plans at a public hearing in May, the plans were approved by a vote of 84% at the Annual Town Meeting in June. 

Fall, 2024  Working with Town officials, and with input from Town staff and Northport’s Climate Resilience Committee, 2A Architects created final construction drawings for the proposed building. Based on construction plan details, the revised estimate for construction was $4.2 M plus another $900,000 for non-construction costs (design, permits, appliances, etc.) for a revised total of about $5.2 million. By February the project was ready to put out to bid, pending passage of the federal budget.

March, 2025 In a setback, Congress failed to pass the federal budget that included $2.3 million earmarked for the project. This meant that funding would need to come almost entirely from a taxpayer bond. The Town reapplied for 2026 congressional funding in case Congress approves a budget next year. 

April, 2025 Northport residents gathered at the Edna Drinkwater School to hear updates on the project, review the plans & ask questions. Concerned that the revised cost would put too much burden on taxpayers, the Select Board decided to propose a municipal bond of no more than $3.5 million, with remaining costs to be raised from grants and a capital campaign, and/or 2026 federal funding if it should become available. 

June 16, 2025 The Annual Northport Town Meeting will be a chance for citizens of Northport to vote to authorize a municipal bond of $3.5 million, and to allow the Select Board to receive grants and donations for construction of the new building, and to proceed with construction as soon as funding is secured.

The Annual Town Meeting is on Monday, June 16, at 6:30pm at the Drinkwater School. The Town Meeting warrant includes six articles related to the Town Office project. 

The first of those articles (Article 18), would authorize the Select Board to borrow up to $3.5 million to fund the project, with the expectation that the Town will raise the remaining funds through grants and donations. This $3.5 million is close to what the projected construction costs were in May 2024 ($3.1 million). 

Article 19 would authorize the Select Board to formally establish a fundraising campaign and to allow donors to have naming rights for rooms or equipment in the new building.

Article 20 would authorize the creation of a dedicated account to receive donations and grant funds for the project.

Article 21 would change the name of the name of the account currently used for the Town Office project.

Article 22 would authorize the Select Board to raise $230,000 for the Town Office project to cover all the expenses prior to beginning construction, including moving and storage costs, rental of temporary office space, any remaining design or permitting costs, and interest on any debt incurred during construction. 

Article 23 would authorize the Select Board to enter into a lease for temporary office space.

A “yes” vote on all six is necessary for the project to proceed. 

The floor plan addresses Town needs that the Select Board identified throughout the design process. It will have:

• Ample office space for our municipal administrative staff & town operations on one floor, fully ADA compliant. 
• Modern and efficient HVAC system – heat pumps for heating and cooling, with a system for heat recovery air exchange. 
• Fireproof vault storage for town records and a map room for storage and review of large maps. 
• Digital access space/reading room for the public. 
• Meeting room that fits up to 88 seated guests (144 standing), with an attached serving kitchen with filtered water & adequate public restrooms, to be used for Town meetings, voting, fire and emergency trainings, Select Board & committee meetings, community gatherings, and rentable space for private or other outside events. 
• Ability to serve as an emergency shelter during extreme weather or other disasters. 
• Public safety improvements including shower & laundry facilities, a breakroom for crew returning from emergency calls, and offices 

• The estimated cost of construction work put out to bid is $4,260,805 (Jan 2025 estimate)
• Additional anticipated “owner” costs are about $890,000 (moving, storage, furnishing, permitting, etc.)
• Total estimated cost: approximately $5,200,000
• The Town has re-submitted a formal request for the next round of Congressional funding (2026) for $2.3 million (the maximum amount that Sen. Collins will support) and is applying for several grants. As of May 30, both Sen. Collins and Sen. King have agreed to support the Town’s request so far. A Fundraising Committee is currently working on a Capital Campaign and will launch the public phase of that campaign in the coming weeks. Whatever is not funded by Congress, grants, or the Capital Campaign will need to be financed by a municipal bond. The Select Board is working to minimize the size of any municipal bond needed to reduce the impact on taxpayers.

Currently, the Town Office & Fire Station use oil for heat, at a cost of about $3,500 per year (variable), plus maintenance costs on an aging boiler. Electricity is roughly $2,100 for each building, totaling about $4,200 per year. Insulation in the current building is not optimal, and windows & doors are leaky. Today’s cost to heat and cool the current building does not result in reliably comfortable conditions in winter or summer for those who work there day in and day out. 

The new building is designed with efficient electric heat pumps (or “mini-splits”) in each room; these units serve dual functions as heaters and AC units. The new structure will meet the most current energy efficiency standards adopted by the State this spring. The Systems Engineer roughly estimates that the new building, more than twice the square footage of the existing one, could use as much as $25,000/year in electricity. However, with a nearly all-electric building, it would be possible to reduce electricity costs by investing in solar panels (either on the roof, or a solar farm elsewhere), conceivably to less than $100/month, depending on how many panels we invested in. We would be positioned to take advantage of significant savings over time, and to reduce dependency on fossil fuel. The only fossil fuel burned would be to heat the fire station (as it is now) — all other heating will be with heat pumps (electricity).  

The Select Board proposes capping the municipal bond at $3.5 million. Because construction is not likely to start until 2026 (awaiting a decision on the federal budget), we’re using a $7.0 million project total to account for potential increased cost due to cost of materials, inflation, and economic uncertainties. However ultimately, the amount of the bond will depend upon the success of the combined efforts of the capital campaign, grants, and federal funding. Possible funding sources and ranges are below:

Based on an interest rate of 4.8% for a 20-year bond of $3.5 million, estimated annual payments would be $263,500.00. To balance these payments, the tax rate would increase by a little under 5%, or, about $86.00 for every $100,000 of a property’s taxable valuation.

Someone can make a motion to reduce the bond amount in the warrant. The Town would need to first vote on making that change before voting on the warrant itself. The consequence of doing that is, in order to build, we would need to find more outside funding. The less the Town is willing to commit to, the more difficult it will be to find outside funders willing to chip in.  A bond in the amount of $3.5 million, while daunting, represents about half of what it could cost to build next year. It would be an earnest commitment by the Town while still communicating that Northport taxpayers cannot shoulder the whole cost. 

We can, but at a cost. Covid delayed the project in 2020, and costs will likely continue to rise with each year of inactivity. Continued delay would mean either (1) spending money now to meet insurance requirements (add temporary supporting wall in the Clerk’s office, fire escape repair, and other required fixes); (2) rent a different space until building new. Estimated cost to rent the maintenance building at Point Lookout would be around $48,000/yr, including utilities & insurance. A one-year delay could increase the total cost by as much as 20% to approximately $6.2 million. A volatile economy, potential tariffs and widespread uncertainty are likely to impact costs going forward. Waiting would likely add to projected overall expense.

Our insurance company has asked the Town to address the deficiencies identified by the structural engineer’s reports, including repair to the fire escape and remedying the structural inadequacies. A structural engineer has given us options to reinforce the structural problems, such as adding support posts or a wall that goes down to the ground under the Clerk’s office. 

Simply repairing the structure to gain insurance would only be a temporary step – none of its other limitations – space, accessibility, efficiency — would be addressed. 

If the warrant articles do not pass, the Town would no longer be eligible for the $2.3 million in federal funding that it has reapplied for. It would also become more difficult to raise outside funding if the project does not garner popular support in the upcoming vote on June 16^th, 2025.

In the event that the measure does not pass, the Select Board would likely review one of the other options (repairing the existing building or revising the plan to something smaller). The Town would need to hold a Special Town Meeting later in 2025 to vote on funding construction plans for a different plan. In the meantime, Town personnel would need to vacate the current building,  and Northport would need to spend money to make the temporary repairs. Redrafting construction plans would cost another $150,000~ and would delay construction for at least another two years. The Town could vote on a revised plan at the 2026 Annual Town meeting, but that Warrant Article could be for as much or more than the current request, because we would miss the funding cycle for federal funding. This would delay construction for at least two more years.