With a facility that is more than 50 years old, the Noroton Fire Department has been looking to embark on a building expansion project to upgrade and improve the firehouse. In October 2005, the department started its capital campaign to raise the money for the project, which it estimated at $1 million.

Almost one year later, the department’s fundraising is not quite where it was expected to be and it recently hit a snag with the Board of Selectmen. The volunteer fire department was hoping the town would waive the building permit fee of about $7,500. The cost of the building permit fee is based on the value of the improvement being done.

The Board of Selectmen denied the department’s request that the town waive the building permit fee.

“We all wanted to do it for the department, but we were concerned about the type of precedent we wanted to set for the future,” First Selectman Evonne Klein said. “The board felt it was not the precedent it wanted to set.”

This denial comes at a time when the department’s fundraising has slowed down after its inital success. It has raised about $200,000 of the total projected cost since launching the campaign. Joe Warren, a department member for more than 40 years, attributes a lot of the difficulty in raising the money to other people having similar fundraising projects right now.

“We’ve got to continue to work hard and make this project a priority for people,” he said. “We’re well short of our goal, but we’re encouraged. We’re always looking for the community’s help.”

The project involves adding much needed square footage to the existing building. It will extend the portion of the building that was added in the 1970s, as well as put an additional level over the structure to make it a two-story facility.

There is also an emergency shelter that would be available to anybody in town during an emergency.

The department had originally hoped to begin construction on the facility by the end of August or early September. Warren said the timeline can be extended if the funding is not in place by that time.

He also said the department has not tallied the offers of goods and services, specifically mentioning someone who offered to dig the foundation for the new addition for free. “They’re not writing us a check, but it has dollar value,” he said.

If the department has not reached its goal, Warren said they can get a loan, but it would prefer not to have to do that. He said they do not want to encumber future volunteers with a 30-year loan. “We’ve made a commitment not to start construction until we’re further along in the fundraising. We’d like to know we have at least one-quarter of the money raised,” he said.

“We’re a little ways away from our goal, so we’re going to need to keep campaigning heavily and see where we can take it,”  Mike Vitti, Noroton fire chief said.


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