Published in the June 22, 2020 edition.

By MARK SARDELLA

WAKEFIELD — For the second time in three years, Town Meeting voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to fund a rehab and expansion for the police side of the Public Safety Building.

The vote was 196-17 at the first Annual Town Meeting of the COVID-19 era, held Saturday in the Charbonneau Field House at Wakefield Memorial High School.

Saturday’s vote was even more lopsided than the one at the 2018 Annual Town Meeting, when residents approved a similar $8 million plan by a vote of 168-41. Subsequent to that vote, a group of citizens collected enough signatures to send the question to a town-wide ballot. The measure was defeated by 76 votes in a June 26, 2018 Special Election.

After Town Administrator Stephen P. Maio made the motion under Article 5 to fund the now $9.6 million project, Police Chief Steven Skory used a PowerPoint presentation to argue for why the project was needed.

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. 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.

Two small storage rooms (5-feet wide) in the basement originally used as an armory work room and arms storage are now occupied by personnel.

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, he said, along with the Records Division, to make the Public Safety Building more user friendly for the public. There would be immediate 24-hour-a-day, walk-in 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 proposed project would create an 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.

Maio said that the project could be funded within the town’s existing budget and would not require a Proposition 2½ override.

Town Councilor Edward Dombroski chaired the Public Safety Building Re-assessment Committee, which was formed after the 2018 election defeat of the previous project. He said that after that panel took an exhaustive look at the needs of the building, they determined that substantially the same approach as the one proposed in 2018 was the correct one.

Bob McLaughlin of Water Street disputed Skory’s claim that the building was 70 years old. McLaughlin maintained that after the 2003 Public Safety Building rehab, he considered the building to be just 16 years old.

Any HVAC issues, he said, should have been dealt with through the warranty.

McLaughlin said that he had no issue with fixing problems with the building, but he did have a problem with the approach of expanding the current building footprint. He said that he did not buy the claim that there were no alternate sites where a new police station could be built.

Permanent Building Committee Chairman Joseph Bertrand said that the most serious problems at the time of the 2003 renovation were on the Fire Department side of the Public Safety Building, and 90 percent of that $10 million project was spent on the fire side of the building.

The current proposal, he said, would solve the problems on the police side.

Erin Chrisos of Broadway argued that the upgrades to the police station are necessary for them “to continue to help us have a safe future. It’s time to fix the problem and not slap a Band-aid on it.

Benny Wheat of Meriam Street wondered what assurances voters would have that the next renovation will be done correctly.

Maio said that much has changed since 2003. The town now has a Permanent Building Committee to oversee projects and the state now requires municipalities to hire an “owner’s project manager” to watch over construction on the town’s behalf.

Robert Mitchell of Spaulding Street served on the Public Safety Building Re-assessment Committee. He said that he was “hugely supportive” of the Police Department but did not agree with the approach of the proposed project.

James King of Old Nahant Road said that Wakefield schools are struggling and need attention more than the Public Safety Building.

Charles McCauley of Lawrence Street questioned plans to have the police stay in the building during construction. Bertrand responded that the project would be done in phases to minimize disruption.

Dan Sherman of High Street warned that it could become difficult to recruit police officers to work out of a building in such poor condition.

Phil Renzi of Morgan Avenue noted that the needs at the Public Safety Building are still there and the price of addressing them will continue to go up.

Councilor Dombroski said that all of the questions raised at Town Meeting were considered by the committee in depth. “There is a cost to delay and inaction,” he said.

Stacy Constas of Wave Avenue said that waiting another two years would make the project even more costly.

“It’s just silly not to move forward now,” she said.

Because the project will require borrowing, a two-thirds majority was required for passage of Article 5. The 196-17 vote in favor easily cleared that hurdle.