Dear Editor,
Rockingham voters will soon vote on our town’s purchase of the Bellows Falls Train Station. The station property has a long history of deferred maintenance and environmental contamination. Costs to address the known problems with the building and site will total millions of dollars. HAZMAT issues at the site include contamination with volatile solvents, chemicals much like those with a history of harm at numerous industrial and military sites. Projected costs have increased substantially during planning. Recent figures for mitigating the HAZMAT and the basic restoration of the building now exceed $4.5 million.
The proposed purchase and the essential work on the property would draw heavily on town funds. The project also would depend on a very complex array of grants. The unacceptable liabilities of chemical contamination are reason enough to cast the idea of the purchase in a negative light. If you also predict the property’s future of burdening taxpayers, the uncertainty of grant funding, and the scarcity of eager future tenants, then you have a second, third, and fourth indelible reason to vote down our town’s purchase of the train station. If the staggering $4.5 million figure weren’t discouraging enough, it doesn’t even include improvements to the building for commercial use. Lastly, the town’s costly investment would be in a building located on leased land.
With so many red flags, it’s time to cut our losses. The proposed purchase is not a sound investment for Rockingham taxpayers.
Please join me in voting down the town’s purchase of the train station.
Sincerely,
Andrew Smith
Bellows Falls, Vt.