When will the men and women who put their lives on the line for the rest of us be given respect? The buildings the fire and police professionals work in should be condemned. They are unsafe and violate laws of accessibility. The schools have had their chance. It is time for the public safety buildings in Melrose to be the budget priority. The school administrators, BOA, SC and Mayor continue to mismanage budgets, personnel matters and have not given the firefighters and police officers anything but lip service.

Agree! The fire department should condemn the police building - and the police should raid the fire department!

Gov. Baker just signed a bill establishing an annual 1st Responders Day Holiday. It will be celebrated on the 3rd Sunday of April. I agree that Melrose does not support public safety well. Time to put money towards facilities, equipment and numbers of officers that this community requires. The schools use a disproportionate amount of taxpayer funds year after year. Bonding should have been used for building a new police and fire station rather than the ridiculous learning commons space at MHS. The state of our fire and police stations are a disgrace. If putting more funds toward Public Saftey requires the BOA members to give up their life long health insurance or CT and her "Administrative Team" giving up their bonuses and raises, so be it!

A debt reduction override to fix these two buildings would pass with flying colors.

The problem is there is such a lack of transparency in the city government and past financial shenanigans are well known. If you give Dolan a pot of money it will end up in various slush funds. It might not happen directly but dollars will be redirected based on a a new windfall no matter what it is allocated for.

I wouldn't vote for any additional taxes with this group in charge and I know a lot of people here that feel the same way. This is what happens when a petty little person is allowed to govern without proper oversight. We are now in a situation where even good causes might not get the attention they deserve. The mayor and the board of alderman are turning Melrose into a third world farce.

Unfortunately I agree. Even if every penny of an override "HAD to go" to new public safety buildings, I couldn't trust that it would, and I'd vote no.

Police need a whole new builing. Its over 100 years old. Was never designed as a police station. Literally falling apart on the inside

If we as a city decide on this, the Police and Fire need to be together. It's the way of the world now. Saugus and Wakefield have already gone this route (among others). It saves money, Instead of two buildings to erect and to care for, you just have one. Although I don't know what we would do with the other two smaller fire houses. Maybe get rid of one? Melrose has 30,000 people and 3 fire houses, Malden has 60,000 and only 4 fire houses. I love our Fire Fighters, but why the heck do we need 3 fire houses? A better comparison would be Wakefield at 25,000 people, and they have two fire houses, which would be perfect here as well.

Doesn't Melrose have 4 fire houses and 1 police station?

Melrose has 3 fire stations - Wakefield is 10 square miles while Melrose is only 4.8 square miles.

Myron like an a$$hole everyone has one.

The number of fire stations we have is a good point. If we went from three to two, we wouldn't cut costs by 1/3, but certainly could cut 1/4 of the budget.

I agree with all of you, but under a froto baggins administration I wouldn't trust an override. Somehow we'd all vote to pass the public safety override and he'd use the money for the schools or something else. This guy can't be trusted.

A directed override has to legally be used for that purpose - even a Mayor can't fiddle with that.

There is no chance the people on this site would ever support an override for new public safety facilities. It doesn't matter who the Mayor is, what the condition of the facilities are, or what the plan might be.

Override for a new public safety building would pass with more than 75% of the vote. People are sick of the school nonsense, not the cops and firefighters.

It would pass and it should pass. Every single person in the town needs public safety. Not everyone needs the schools. Agree with reducing the number of fire stations and combining police and fire. Good ideas.

Schools have had chance after chance. Time to give the police and fire the respect they deserve.