SOUTHAMPTON — Last month, residents at Annual Town Meeting voted in favor of Article 11, which authorized the Select Board to purchase 52 acres located along College Highway, across from the Cumberland Farms convenience store. This month, voters will be asked to authorize borrowing $2.2 million to pay for the property.
Members of both the Public Safety Building Committee and Senior Center Building Committee spent considerable energies looking at every possible piece of land in town that could, by any reasonable criteria, be usable for either project. According to Town Administrator Scott Sczcebak, the property at 117 through 225 College Highway checks all the necessary boxes.
“When you build a public safety complex you need to be close to a main road, be able to access the road, have enough space to build,” Sczcebak said. The location should also be centrally located. “You can’t really have your main public responders on the edge of the town [and] there’s not many, if any at all, [other] potential parcels that would fit that criteria.”
Now that negotiations are complete, town officials are feeling fortunate to be able to buy the property from members of the Labrie family, who originally donated four acres for the siting of a new public safety complex. The original gift was landlocked. Town officials first discussed the purchase of a few additional acres to provide direct access onto College Highway.
The land purchase seems especially fortunate now that the favored property for a new senior center did not work out. The Senior Center Building Committee, formed as a result of a bequest from the estate of David Parsons for $2.5 million, continues to seek a location. The College Highway purchase may eventually provide the necessary four to five acres.
The preferred site for a new senior center was 89 Clark St. The property was on the warrant for purchase at Town Meeting. The wetlands delineation, one of the last tasks of due diligence performed by the committee, revealed a lack of sufficient dry land to accommodate a center for seniors.
The discovery, a week before Town Meeting, was a major disappointment for committee members. The College Highway property softened the blow. While the primary use of the Labrie land will be the public safety complex, a dire need for the town, that facility will not occupy more than a quarter of the total space.
Other uses have been discussed, including playing fields for soccer and baseball. Prior to the negotiation of the larger land deal there was discussion of erecting a condominium project on the site. But the central location, perc test results and extent of usable footage make the spot, complete with lovely views of Mount Tom, ideal for municipal uses. The proposed greenway bike path runs along the property and will also enhance usability for an aging population.
Sczcebak offered a rough estimate of 10 cents per thousand as the impact on the tax rate for the debt exclusion of $2.2 million. A debt exclusion requires a separate vote by residents because the tax burden will not be included in the operating budget. A debt exclusion tax will be in addition to the assessed tax rate.
Sczcebak said the estimated 10 cent impact does not include interest, which should be modest. In that scenario, the borrowing would be over 20 years. He estimated that an owner of a property with the average assessed value, about $420,000, will see a $42 annual increase in their taxes. A shorter borrowing period would result in a higher annual tax increase.
“This is going to be a very engaging public process,” Sczcebak said. “If this passes, the next step would be the planning and the design of the land.”
The debt exclusion vote is scheduled for June 25, from noon until 8 p.m. More information and a copy of the single warrant article can be found by scrolling down to the news listings on the landing page of the town website.
