Residents at a special election Saturday overwhelmingly voted to pay more taxes to see a new $26 million fire station built, thesunchronicle.com reported.
By a vote of 1,359-466, voters backed a tax hike overriding state tax-levy limiting law Proposition 2 1/2 to pay for the station, the report said.
The current average single-family home’s assessed value is $626,131, and that home will face an estimated annual $538 increase on the tax bill based on a 25-year bond with a 5% interest rate, the report said.
A total of 1,844, or just under a quarter of the town’s 7,803 registered voters, turned out to the poll at the Freeman-Kennedy School, according to the report.
Construction could begin in the spring with completion anticipated in fall 2024.
A new station has been estimated to cost $26 million, a sum which would be offset by about $3.3 million left over from a 2016 appropriation for new police and fire stations, an earlier report said. The fire station was never built because of cost overruns with the police station.
Plans call for the new fire station to be built on the Main Street site of the present fire station, which is outdated and undersized, according to the report. A new fire station building committee has been planning the project for nearly two years, and has held forums and tours of the fire station, which had also been the old police station.
For more information, visit www.norfolk.ma.us, where there is a detailed town meeting warrant article about the fire station project. Also, the building committee has a page on the town website with in-depth information, including answers to frequently asked questions, presentations, documents, about the current station, and meeting agendas and minutes.