CABOT – The select board has crafted a plan to use FEMA funds intended for a new fire station for unauthorized purposes. It is expected to help improve the lives of Cabot residents in ways that FEMA funding won’t allow.
A Cabot Chronicle World Headquarters will be built in the lot next to Nama Farm, where the fire station was intended to be built. Outside, a 200 foot tall Turkey Monument in memory of Walter Bothfeld will welcome visitors arriving from the south on Route 215.
Cabot Chronicle Editor, Jeannie Johnson expressed pleasure at the plan, launched by the Cabot Community Association’s Lori Augustyniak.
Johnson explained that the Chronicle has plans to purchase the Times-Argus, Hardwick Gazette, Caledonian Record and News and Citizen of Morrisville. She said, “The new 50,000 square foot building with four offset presses will be cheap to acquire as other printed newspapers fail and the equipment is available for a song.”
Cabot Fire Chief Dean Deasy approves of the plan, saying, “Fire trucks are made to get wet and we can just dry our hoses over the Chronicle’s flagpole or let Nama Farm use them for irrigation. Ama Peyman was ecstatic when told. “I was about to buy new hoses and this will save me a bundle.”
Deasy said it would be easier to move equipment into “any old garage or tennis and basketball court when the next disaster strikes anyway.”
In authorizing the plan, Cabot’s select board had an executive session in which it’s been reported the decision was deemed reasonable because “those bureaucrats never come here to check on where their money goes anyway.”
While some residents had expressed concern about the original plan, many seemed pleased about the new plan. One resident was overheard to say, “it’s about time we got back at those bureaucrats in Montpelier and Washington.”
Larry Gochey, who expressed concern at town meeting about the location of the fire station, was pleased that sharing the station’s hoses will help the fire station to be a good neighbor.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for April 1.
