By CHRIS COLLINS
Photo provided by Greenfield Fire
(Greenfield, MA) — The city of Greenfield is looking for some help from the feds in its effort to build a new fire station.
Greenfield Mayor Roxann Wedegartner met Thursday with a representative from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to discuss possible grant opportunities related to a number of projects, chief among them construction of both a new and temporary headquarters for the fire department.
A total of $10 million has been appropriated for the project by the city council, but Wedegartner has announced that she will be requesting an additional $5 million for that project. A $2 million state grant to clean up a Riddell Street site for the new fire house is off the table now that the town has decided to go with the Main Street open air market as the preferred site for a permanent structure.
“Grants are not guaranteed but we will do whatever we can to pursue supplemental funding for the fire station,” Wedegartner told the city council Wednesday night.
Wedegartner told the city council has benefited from U.S.D.A grants in the past, including for the city’s planned construction of $4 million sludge digester. That project has been temporarily been put on hold because of the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic.