The Harpswell Select Board has voted unanimously to deny a request by the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department to hire a consultant to study the impact of building a central emergency services facility on Mountain Road.
The proposed study by Camden-based consultant Neil Courtney would have assessed the potential drawbacks and benefits of a central station. OBIFD leaders have expressed concerns about the proposal to build a central station, and have floated an alternative plan.
Harpswell has three independent, volunteer fire departments — the Cundy’s Harbor Volunteer Fire Department, Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue, and the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department. The town employs a small staff of firefighters who supplement the volunteer workforce and split their time between the Harpswell Neck and Orr’s Island stations.
The town is proposing to build a $5.1 million municipal fire station to house its firefighters and improve its support of the volunteer departments. OBIFD, however, has suggested that the town scrap the plan and instead post municipal firefighters at each of three outlying stations owned by the independent departments — or at least conduct the study before it builds the station.
Harpswell’s Fire and Rescue Planning Committee voted 3-2 at its Dec. 9 meeting, with two members absent, to recommend hiring the consultant. Courtney’s proposed fee for the work was $8,300.
But at a meeting on Thursday, Dec. 19, all three Select Board members agreed that the town already possesses the data Courtney would have used to make his assessment. They voted 3-0 to reject OBIFD’s request.
“I’m not in favor of going with this consultant,” Select Board Chair Kevin Johnson said. “We’ve been working on this since 2016. We have enough knowledge in town among our fire departments to (assess) any data that needs to be brought up — it’s available.”
Select Board members David Chipman and Jane Covey agreed. They directed the Fire and Rescue Planning Committee, of which Johnson is a member, to come up with a list of specific questions it wants answered about the competing proposals.
David Mercier, fire chief at Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue and a member of the Fire and Rescue Planning Committee, agreed with the Select Board’s decision. He offered to put together a report that would compare the likely costs of the competing plans, as well as each plan’s likely impact on emergency response times.
“Our department has done considerable work looking at developing the information that’s been requested,” he told the Select Board. “We’ve found that this information is all available to us.”
Mercier said he has examined reports written by Courtney for other towns. “The majority of information that he has in those reports comes from the (fire) departments,” he said. “It’s not coming from outside sources.”
Kathy Hirst, treasurer of OBIFD’s Board of Directors, told the Select Board she agrees that it doesn’t make sense to pay for a report that simply repackages information already available to the town.
However, Hirst said her organization still supports hiring an outside expert with regional or national experience to put together a comprehensive, independent comparison of the two competing plans for reinforcing Harpswell’s emergency services.
“We strongly advise that this makes sense, because we’re talking about (spending) a lot of money here,” said Hirst, who also chairs OBIFD’s Strategic Planning Committee. “And before we do that, we’d like to know that there’s consensus across the three fire departments … to move in the same direction.”
The town appears likely to ask voters at the next Town Meeting in March 2025 whether they want to fund the construction of the central station.
The current estimated construction cost is $5.1 million, scaled back from original plans that would have cost more than $7 million to build. The station would be operated by existing municipal fire and rescue staff, with room for additional hires.
OBIFD’s alternative would at least triple the number of firefighters in the town’s employ and involve the replacement of the Cundy’s Harbor station. It would place the additional firefighters at outlying stations and direct more town funds to those facilities and the independent departments that own them.
OBIFD leaders say the central station would have a chilling effect on volunteer recruitment efforts. They say posting more firefighters at the existing stations would keep them closer to population centers.
They have argued that the alternative plan would also save the town money, which supporters of a central station dispute.
