The city’s beleaguered police station will be getting some much-needed maintenance after the City Council approved a series of repairs, upgrades and pest control measures last week.
The Public Safety Commission also will be tasked with taking a look at a number of other potential fixes or updates to parts of the station and will make recommendations to the council at a later date. The council appropriated $215,500 last week to cover the costs of the actions it approved.
Though the original item called for fumigation and upgrades to the electrical system, the council decided to add a variety of other repairs because of previous deferrals of maintenance and some newer issues created by the most recent earthquake.
“It is our home,” Police Chief John Incontro said at Friday’s meeting. “We’ve spent many, many hours in that place, and it is not a healthy home right now.”
The council set aside $84,000 to pay for the fumigation and repair cracked masonry walls, repaint the ground level’s walls, clean and repaint the basement walls, replace malfunctioning toilets and repair plumbing behind the Emergency Operations Center. These physical repairs and upgrades add to the initial $66,700 proposal for just the fumigation.
The fumigation will take place during the Thanksgiving holiday, during which there are few municipal employees around the City Hall campus. A termite infestation has returned to the old building, and gnats, spiders and other pests have been noted by officers and other employees there.
“It is kind of an issue with morale,” Incontro said. “Officers like to have a clean location.”
Another $108,500 was approved to pay for a new series of amp panels to be installed in the station’s wiring system, a move that will alleviate issues with powering cooling systems and also allow the department to purchase required upgrades to its 911 system.
The building was last wired in 1995, and since then, the scale of electronic devices has only ballooned. Additionally, the heat waves this summer highlighted the limitations of powering the air-conditioning systems alongside everything else.
“It’s clear that since the electrical system hasn’t been upgraded since 1995, we are not capable of operating,” Incontro said. “The need for electrical devices has dramatically increased. Next fiscal year, I’m going to be asking for additional devices that we are going to be mandated to have as part of the racial bias reporting system that is mandated by the state.”
Another $23,000 was appropriated to remodel the station’s front counter area and the flooring throughout the building. The safety commission is also expected to make future recommendations with regard to the station’s doors and alarm systems.
Councilwoman Susan Jakubowski voted against the repair and remodeling items — not to deny the department its deferred maintenance, but out of hope for having a wider, more thorough assessment of the building.
“The layout is poor. The amount of deferred maintenance is extensive,” she said. “I do feel we’re using a number of Band-Aids and I do think we’re putting lipstick on a pig. It would have been my strong preference … that we could slow this down and do it properly, including a utilization study.
“Fundamentally, I’m not in support because I would like for you to have something better,” she told the police chief.
Incontro said he strongly agreed with Jakubowski’s approach but conceded that some of these lighter fixes would dramatically improve the quality of life at the station. Still, he remained hopeful for future evaluations of the space.
“It is important that we do an assessment,” he said. “We don’t have a location to really interact with the community as most police facilities do. To have the ability to host meetings and to have the ability to bring in other organizations to meet with us and ensure we have transparency and partnership with the community is important.”
Police Station to Get Some of the Upgrades It Needs
