Mt. Kisco Voters to Decide on $4M Bond for Firehouse Work

Mount Kisco officials held a public session last Thursday to detail what’s at stake for the village’s three firehouses as voters decide Nov. 5 whether to authorize another $4 million to help renovate and expand the facilities.

The session at Village Hall, led by Mount Kisco’s Board of Fire Commissioners and attended by the Village Board and representatives of H2M architects + engineers, centered on what work would be completed if the referendum succeeds and what the fire department would face should it fail.

The latest referendum on the general election ballot is scheduled two years after voters passed the original $10.25 million bond issue. Officials learned last winter that miscalculations by H2M along with cost escalations would see the village fall as much as $8 million short to complete the original scope of work.

The Green Street firehouse, where the Union Hook & Ladder Co. and Mount Kisco Fire Rescue Police are based, was built in 1949, while the Mutual Hose and Engine Co. firehouse on Main Street and the Independent Fire Co. facility on Lexington Avenue were built in 1954 and 1955, respectively.

Fire Commissioner Michael Curtis said the extra $4 million will allow for both renovation and expansion of the three facilities, even though multiple items from the original project have been excluded. If the referendum is defeated, work would be primarily limited to bringing the three buildings up to code and making infrastructure improvements such as electrical upgrades and basic firefighter safety improvements. An exception would be a one-bay addition at the Main Street firehouse.

“While the renovations will get done, we would not be able to expand the firehouses and that’s something we desperately need to do,” Curtis said. “Our equipment gets larger every year.”

Architect David Pacheco, vice president of H2M, said the building envelopes need to be expanded to have enough room for today’s larger apparatus and to provided dedicated space to separate contaminated gear. In all three locations, firefighters are currently susceptible to a “crushing hazard” because there are just a few inches to spare in the front of the trucks and the inside of the front door and the back of the trucks and the rear wall of the firehouses, Pacheco said.

He said safety standards recommend three feet of space on all sides of the trucks.

There is also inadequate room to implement cross-contamination and cancer-reduction measures when firefighters return from a fire, Pacheco said.

In addition, ventilation and exhaust systems would be serviced but not replaced.

“This is an important task because these facilities need to operate efficiently and people getting dressed near apparatus or turnout gear that’s in a contaminated area are big problems for firefighters,” Pacheco said.

Despite the extra debt service associated with the additional $4 million, Mount Kisco is projected to remain within the tax cap for the foreseeable future, said Village Manager Edward Brancati. Should the extra bond pass, the village would see a 3.52 percent tax increase for the 2020-21 fiscal year, a $122 hike for homeowners in the average Mount Kisco residence with a $415,000 market value, he said.

However, with the village able to apply carryover from consistently being below the tax cap, it would qualify to be within the cap, Brancati said.

Based on current projections, there would be a 2 percent tax increase each of the two following years before leveling off to 1 percent annual increase for the remainder of the bond.

Mayor Gina Picinich said after the Village Board and fire commissioners huddled to discuss what should be done once it was learned that the 2017 bond would fall far short of completing the original scope of work, a compromise was reached to ask for about half of the money while scaling back portions of the project.

Regardless of the outcome of the referendum vote, there will at least be work done with the money authorized by voters in the $10.25 million bond.

“That money has been secured,” Picinich said. “At the very least, we will be renovating our firehouses for that amount of money.”

She said the village would start the process of rebidding the project shortly after the vote and hope to commence work next spring.

One resident asked why the village was considering pouring money into the three existing firehouses that are each 65 to 70 years old when it could build a brand-new firehouse for a project $20 million.

Curtis said department brass concluded that the three firehouses contribute to shorter response times. That is critically important because in addition to the village, the Mount Kisco Fire Department is also contracted to provide service to portions of Bedford and New Castle, he said.

“We’re not going for fancy,” Curtis said. “There’s no gold-plated anything. It’s just going to be what we need for a modern fire department. It’s what we need. We’re one of the larger fire departments in the upper part of the county and we cover a lot of area.”

Picinich said the village plans to recover damages from H2M that is equivalent to the cost of the extra design plans and the escalation of construction costs. The company has already agreed to base their fee on the $10.25 million project, not $14.25 million, should the Nov. 5 proposition pass, she said.