HANOVER — September 8, 2026 — Fire Chief Jason Cavallaro asked the Select Board to stop treating a North Hanover substation as an active capital project and to back roughly $5 million in expansion and interior work at Fire Department headquarters instead, a pivot the town manager formally recommended and no board member opposed, aiming at a debt vote in May.
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Of the four capital items the town manager brought to the board, only one arrived as a formal recommendation: a debt authorization at the annual town meeting in May to expand and renovate Fire Department headquarters. The North Hanover substation it displaces has been pursued in one form or another for decades, and the land the town acquired for it, Town Manager Joe Colangelo said, is not buildable.
Earlier plans carried the work as $500,000 to get the project shovel-ready plus $4.5 million for construction. Those lines have been combined, using estimates developed with an architectural firm rather than the rough numbers used elsewhere in the presentation. Member James Hoyes noted the $5 million total exceeds last year’s capital plan because it consolidates three or four line items.
Chief Cavallaro, speaking to a memo written to Colangelo, told the board the geographic need in North Hanover is real and unchanged. What has changed is the town’s ability to meet it: no viable site, significant financial constraints, limited staffing. About 50% of the department’s calls arrive concurrently, and dividing personnel between two stations could dilute the initial response to structure fires and serious medical emergencies.
Without additional resources we would largely just be moving existing resources across town and spreading them out rather than adding any real capacity.
— Fire Chief Jason Cavallaro (28:17)
Headquarters is approaching 40 years old with no major upgrade in that time beyond work in the office area. The expansion would add apparatus bays — trucks and equipment are parked around town — and interior work would provide privacy, changing areas and bathrooms the chief called necessary for a more diverse workforce, not cosmetic.
Board members lined up behind it. Vanessa O’Connor, who served on a substation study committee before being elected, said the town should not put all its eggs in that basket when cheaper measures would improve the department more broadly. Hoyes credited the chief for costing out staffing and operations, not construction alone, calling that the missing link on past town projects. Chair Greg Satterwhite, a North Hanover resident, said a well-equipped central station that can attract and keep firefighters beats more years of discussion.
Asked when a detailed plan and a public hearing would follow, Colangelo said planning would begin immediately and a timeline would go to the board. Chief Cavallaro said a more specific conceptual plan requires money the town has not appropriated, and that a project above $1.5 million would need an owner’s project manager first.
