Published in the June 16, 2020 edition.
By MARK SARDELLA
WAKEFIELD — At Saturday’s Town Meeting, voters will again consider a proposal to renovate and expand the police side of the Public Safety Building. The article appears as Article 5 on the Annual Town Meeting warrant.
A televised forum was held last week to discuss the $9.6 million project featuring Police Chief Steven Skory, Town Administrator Stephen P. Maio, Permanent Building Committee Chairman (and Finance Committee member) Joseph Bertrand and Town Councilor Edward Dombroski. Dombroski also chaired the 16-member Public Safety Building Re-assessment Committee.
Dombroski reminded viewers that in April of 2018, Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved an $8 million expansion/renovation of the Public Safety Building. But a resident petition to send the matter to a town-wide ballot resulted in the defeat of the project by 74 votes at a June 26, 2018 Special Election.
Dombroski said that because the building deficiencies that drove the first proposal continue to exist, a Public Safety Building Re-assessment Committee was formed to take another look at the matter. He said that the new committee spent time focused on the concerns about the proposal that were raised at the first Town Meeting and since.
He said that several subcommittees were formed to examine ways to improve the proposal, look at funding sources, check into the possibility of an alternate site and to look at the functionality of the building in the context of modern policing needs.
After many robust discussions, Dombroski said, the committee concluded that the original approach was the correct one, resulting in a new plan that is very similar to the 2018 proposal, with some modifications. Due to the passage of time, however, the new $9.6 million price tag will be about 20 percent higher than it would have been in 2018.
Dombroski turned the floor over to Chief Skory to discuss the details of the project.
Skory noted that when the Police Station was built in 1950, it offered 9,405 square feet of operational space for a police force of 34 officers and one civilian. There were 4,000 calls for service that year, Skory said.
The size of the building has not significantly changed since then, Skory added. The Police Department now has about 10,000 square feet of operational space, he said, for a department of 47 officers (plus support staff) that handled 18,900 calls last year.
A small 2003 addition to the rear of the police building houses the 911 room, boiler room, IT room and elevator room. Those rooms have water leaks and temperature control issues, Skory said.
A 2017 study also found that the overall building was undersized, there were lobby access and safety issues, environmental concerns with the HVAC and ventilation systems as well as problems in the evidence storage areas.
“The overall layout is not conducive to best practices,” Skory said.
An analysis determined that the most efficient and cost effective means to add usable space would be through structurally independent horizontal additions adjacent to the existing building, Skory said, mainly bumping the front of the building out on the Union Street side.
The lobby is not user friendly, Skory maintained. Guiding signs have been added to direct the public. Police Records Officers are constantly directing walk-ins to the Fire Department. The lobby is only manned during regular business hours during the week. At other times walk-ins must pick up a phone to speak to an officer.
Locker rooms have unusable lockers due to columns, Skory noted. Both male and female locker rooms are nearly at capacity due to lockers needing to be used for storage. Two small storage rooms
(5-feet wide) in the basement originally used for armory work room and arms storage now occupied by personnel.
K9 equipment/gear is stored in the water-services room in the garage, the Chief said. The roll-call room is far too small for daily briefings and training.
The bicycle room had to be converted into an armory due to lack of space, he said, and is not up to code. Bicycles and other equipment are now stored in hallways. Recovered-property room is unusable, with some items stored on blocks due to water damage, he noted. Equipment stored off-site is difficult to access.
The prisoner bay too is small and creates a safety issue, Skory observed, as the security door must remain open in order to allow enough clearance to remove prisoner from rear compartment of the prisoner van.
Skory talked about the project benefits.
“Dispatch would move to the lobby, along with the Records Division, to make the Public Safety Building more user friendly for our customers,” Skory said. There would be immediate 24-hour-a-day access to an officer in an emergency, and privacy concerns for sensitive cases would be alleviated.
The layout of the building would be reconfigured to better serve the officers and utilize best practices. Prisoner security in the sally port would be upgraded and system upgrades would protect critical infrastructure.
The total area of operational space for the police department prior tothe 2003 renovation was 9,405 square feet, Skory noted. That renovation only added 597 square feet of operational space to the police department. This space was accounted for by the sally port which is 620 square feet.
The proposed project would create and additional 4,192 square feet of operational space, which is an increase of more than 40 percent, the Chief said. The Increase in operational space would meet current needs and will allow the Police Department to grow with the community and create space for additional support personnel, he added.
Town Administrator Stephen P. Maio talked about how the project would be financed. He said that there is room to borrow for this project within the town’s existing bond portfolio and the project could be handled within the current tax levy. Although the cost is estimated to be higher now than it would have been in 2018, Maio said that the town may benefit from a lower price due to the COVID-19 shutdown’s effect on the construction industry.
He also stressed that doing this project would in no way impact the potential for a new high school.
Permanent Building Committee Chairman Joseph Bertrand said that a vertical expansion was structurally not feasible. The best option is to bump out a little toward Union Street with a small area also added in the rear. Construction will be phased so that the Police Department will not have to relocate.
Bertrand called the proposed project “economically feasible” and “a very good investment for the town.”
It was also noted that alternative sites for a new Public Safety Building were looked at and were either not available or were determined to be too costly.
Maio noted that requirements for municipal construction now include safeguards related to quality control that were not in place when the first renovation was done in 2003.
Maio stressed that now is the time to get this project done. He said that the town may benefit from lower bid as the construction industry ramps back up after the COVID shutdown.
Dombroski agreed, saying that there would be a cost to the town of inaction as prices would continue to rise.
He also urged voters to view several videos on the Public Safety Building renovation prior to Town Meeting, including a building tour, that are currently posted on the town’s web site.