Plympton Fire Station Faces State Citations, Board Weighs Return to Ballot

PLYMPTON — June 9, 2025 — Plympton Select Board braces for fire station safety citations as town weighs whether to retry $14 million ballot measure. The board met June 9 and heard from Town Properties Committee member John Wilhelmsen that a state safety inspection of the existing fire station identified three formal violations — water intrusion near an electrical panel, an inoperable slab-based heating system, and apparatus-bay floor drains connecting directly to the septic system — with a citation letter expected by the end of June and a 30-to-90-day remediation clock to follow. The existing $14 million new-station proposal, approved at town meeting but defeated at a June debt-exclusion ballot by roughly 64 to 36 percent, left the town without a replacement plan. Fire Chief Cheryl Duddy, in a letter read into the record, argued that scrapping more than $1 million in completed design and study work "would be fiscally irresponsible," while committee members warned that band-aid repairs could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars without solving the underlying space problem. Separately, the board unanimously approved a new 34-month electrical aggregation contract projected to cut rates 10 to 15 percent below current NSTAR pricing, appointed Timothy Johnson as a full-time patrolman, and authorized Nathan Sides as its Plymouth County Committees representative.