GREENFIELD — City Council is expected to be asked in its meeting next Wednesday to approve, reject or modify a capital request from the police chief for $1.35 million to begin a three-year upgrade and renovation of the Police Station on High Street.
Problems that Police Chief Robert Haigh Jr. has described in the building include everything from too-small spaces and lack of natural light to the lack of locker space for female officers and security issues.
City Council tabled Haigh’s request and the discussion that followed last month, with councilors asking for more information and details from the chief, who said he will be prepared with that this month.
Haigh and Mayor Roxann Wedegartner said the work is necessary for several reasons, including that the city chose not to build a public safety complex that would have included police for at least the next 10 years, so work will need to be done not only for the benefit of officers, but for accreditation purposes.
“Up until last year, we planned on moving into a new space, so we didn’t start the necessary upgrades and renovations then,” Haigh recalled.
“This now begins those necessary renovations to our Police Department building to maintain the important accreditation, as well as provide safety to our police force,” Wedegartner said. “In our five-year capital budget from last year, there was a sum of $5 million to renovate the building. It was resubmitted this year by Chief Robbie Haigh, and because the city decided not to build a public safety complex, repairs are going to have to happen.”
The Capital Improvement Committee has lowered this year’s amount and spread the remaining amount over three years to stay within the city’s borrowing limits, according to Greenfield Finance Director Liz Gilman.
“We really need to begin these repairs in (fiscal year 2022),” Wedegartner said, adding that $100,000 would come from the city’s Capital Stabilization account, while the rest would be borrowed. Wedegartner said she believes work on the Police Station should be a priority for the city.
The High Street building was a medical office before the Police Department moved into it, and it hasn’t been upgraded since 1998. Some of next fiscal year’s money would be used to hire an architect/engineer to assess the cost of repairs needed over the next several years. Then, Haigh said, those repairs will be prioritized.
The first thing you notice as you enter from High Street is that the parking lot is in need of repaving. There are ruts, cracks and holes.
“Our sally port, for instance, is a temporary building attached to the permanent one,” Haigh said during a recent tour. “Water comes in, we’re storing evidence in there and it’s just not ideal for transporting. The doors have had to be replaced. It just causes a lot of problems.”
The booking room is not set up for police safety — prisoners sit within 6 feet of an officer, with just a desk between them. The interview room is also adjacent, so there isn’t much privacy.
“It’s tight quarters,” Haigh said. “People shouldn’t be in such close proximity, even without a pandemic.”
Though the cell blocks were “grandfathered” when police moved into the building, Haigh said they shouldn’t be so small. Administrators,’ detectives’ and supervisors’ offices are just as small, as all of those rooms were once examination rooms.
“Every year we’ve gotten a letter from the state saying our cell blocks don’t meet current standards,” he said. “And we now have a female supervisor and female officers, and that population is only going to continue to grow, so we need a locker room. Right now we can’t provide that to them.”
Dispatchers work out of a very small, dark room with no natural lighting, so Haigh would like to see that be one of the first issues addressed.
“They spend their entire shift inside of what is essentially a closet,” he said. “That’s a terrible environment.”
Haigh said if City Council votes to provide the $1.35 million, he will split the work over three years.
“We’d obviously take care of security issues first,” he said. “We also have to upgrade our communications room where our new radio system and equipment are kept. We need more space for that equipment.”
Though Haigh showed the reporter areas where security could be compromised, he asked that they not be mentioned for exactly those reasons.
The request was considered by the council’s Ways and Means Committee and while members said they empathize with the needs presented by Haigh, they want more information and possibly some cost estimates, rather than approve that amount of money without those details.
City Council will meet online next Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. to hold a public hearing on the fiscal year 2022 operating budget. It will meet at 7 p.m. for its regular monthly meeting, at which time it said last month it would discuss the Police Department’s capital request.
To access the virtual meeting, visit bit.ly/3w2eIdd.