Seekonk Town Meeting to decide on new fire station, feasibility study

Some major financial expenditures and zoning bylaw changes are on the warrant for the Fall Town Meeting on Monday, November 9.

One article calls for fund transfers including:

The sum of $403,785 from Free Cash to the Stabilization Fund.

The sum of $403,785 from Free Cash to the Municipal Capital Stabilization Fund.

The sum of $403,785 from Free Cash to the Building & Infrastructure Stabilization Fund.

The sum of $403,785 from Free Cash to the Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB) Trust Fund.

Another article seeks the sum of $9,750,000 to fund the construction of the South End Fire Station, including utility and other site improvements incidental or directly related to such construction.

Select Board Chair Gary Sagar cited a report that noted 60 percent of the “runs” are in the south end of town.

“Some of the response times are getting longer, there’s data that indicates from January to September 2026, there were 56 calls which took longer than 10 minutes (for the Fire Department) to respond to. That’s just not acceptable. The volume of runs is increasing steadily. They’re a very busy department.”

The funding for the project would come from a debt exclusion, which is a temporary tax increase.

Sagar noted the increase would be $85 annually for a 20 year period for a home valued at $500,000.

James Tusino, the Chairman of the South End Fire Station Building Committee, applied for a building permit before the implementation of a new Energy Code.

“‘If we don’t move forward with this project, the building permit will expire and the $450,000 we have spent will be wasted money,” Sagar explained at a joint meeting with the Finance Committee and School Committee on October 21.

If the permit expires, the project is estimated to cost taxpayers millions more in updated code compliance and inflated construction costs. 

Previous attempts to secure funding for the project have failed, including a vote at the May 2025 Town Meeting.  A second attempt to authorize funding for the project was rejected by voters at a special Town Meeting in September 2025.

The School Department is asking voters to appropriate the sum of $1,750,000 to conduct a feasibility study of the addition, renovation, or new construction of the Hurley Middle School with additional consideration of options for grades 5 and 9-12. The Town may be eligible for a grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (“MSBA”) with the amount to be expended under the direction of the Seekonk School Building Committee.

A zoning bylaw change would create a new definition of a data center, which reads in part: “Data Center: A building or series of buildings that houses and supports the high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and related computing infrastructure and equipment necessary for storing, processing, and distributing data and applications, and for which the principal purpose is the storage of data.”

The meeting will begin at 6 pm at Seekonk High School, 261 Arcade Avenue.