Tonight the residents of the Montague Center Fire District will vote on whether to approve the construction of a new firehouse to be built on Old Sunderland Road. This should prove to be interesting. As the article in the Greenfield Recorder said yesterday, the fire district has outgrown the present firehouse (it used to hold carriages). There are no training facilities or showers and the vehicles the station presently has barely fit into their bays. There are critics who are concerned about a raise in taxes and environmental impacts. Fire Chief John Greene said in The Recorder that there will be four items on the agenda, "the first two have to do with the proposed fire station, and the second two ask for money that the district used as a match for a federal grant be replaced in two different accounts." The tax rates would be double what they are now if Montague Center merged with the Turners Falls Fire District, and the result would probably be worse service. The Montague Center Fire District firefighters are a well-trained volunteer force who are nominally paid for their dedication and hard work. I believe that they deserve, as do the inhabitants of the fire district, a new firehouse. The meeting will be at the firehouse on Station Street at 7:00 PM.