Officials to Meet to Discuss New Police Station Plans
By David Huck | Correspondent at November 28, 2023 | 10:15 am | Print
Members of the Police Commission, along with Police Chief Paul Fitzgerald, are planning to meet early next month with the architect working on the police station to determine how to proceed with making the project more palatable to residents following a referendum defeat.
At the Town Council’s meeting on Nov. 18, the council discussed the the outcome of the referendum vote and decided to refer the project back to the Police Commission following a nearly 3-1 rejection on Election Day.
Republican Council member David Evans suggested creating a bipartisan commission to review the options for the project. Democratic Mayor Rachel Rochette suggested instead to refer it back to the Police Commission, the body that originally developed the statement of need for the police department.
“Ultimately its going to be someone sitting across the table and saying, ‘Chief can you do without this? Chief can you do without that? It’s going to be cuts, cuts, cuts,” Fitzgerald said. “And how will those cuts impact the cost of the station as well as the efficiency of the station?.”
Fitzgerald says he has reached out to Town Engineer Arthur Simonian to have him arrange a meeting, tentatively set for Dec. 2, to meet with Brian Humes of Jacunski Humes Architects.
“The feeling is that this is a bipartisan group and we can work here and if and when when we go to the Public Building Commission, they are another bipartisan group,” Fitzgerald said. “I don’t think we can do it alone. I think we need the architect involved and the gentleman from Downes Construction. We many actually need the Public Building Commission—if there are any costs incurred—to cover those costs for that type of assistance.”
Based on comments that he heard from residents, Police Commission Bradford Parsons member said that taxpayers will not go for a $21 million project, “period.”
“But will they go for $19 (million)—where is the line?” Fitzgerald said.
Parsons said that redesigning the plans for a new police department that costs no more than $15 million to build will have a greater chance of getting approved. “A better than 50-50 chance,” Parsons said.
“In my opinion, if it were $15 (million), then we shouldn’t even do it,” Fitzgerald quickly responded.
Parsons said that based on many residents with whom he has spoken, the need for a new police station is “legitimate,” but that they are concerned about an increase in their taxes with other municipal projects, such as the $83 million renovation of Berlin High School, that also have to be funded. “The fact that there’s a dollar impact on their budget, on their monthly or family budget, that they can’t swing,” Parsons said. “I don’t see that getting better for another couple years.”
Commission member Robert Peters suggested that the commission not begin the process of redesigning the police station by choosing a budget limit and then paring down the project to meet that figure. “There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and not just money questions,” Peters said. He said he wants to know if fiber optics—which are used in policing equipment—run down Webster Square Road, presumably to a site officials had once considered for a police station but is now a revived car dealership. He said at one point “someone gave us bad information or bum information” during the time period when officials were debating what location to build a new police station.
“I think that as a commission, if we are going to start this again, let’s start and let’s get the answers,” said Peters, who voted in favor of the referendum question. “We want a police station that we can be proud of. Does it have to serve us for 50 years? No.”
Police Commission members largely avoided the discussion around which elements of the $21 million plan should be eliminated from the project to bring the cost down. Peters, however, did briefly raise the issue of the firing range. “To my knowledge, what department around here has a firing range?” he asked. “I don’t know. Do we need a firing range? I don’t know that answer.”
Several Police Commission members agreed that if the high school weren’t undergoing a renovation, the $21 million bonding question would have been approved, “without question.”
“If (Democratic Rep. Joe) Aresimowicz wanted to do something for the town of Berlin, he shouldn’t have gotten the $20 million from the state for the high school, he should have got the $20 million for the police department,” Peters said.
Commission members also quickly rejected any rumors that area towns are looking to regionalize and combine their police departments with Berlin. “We’re not asking to combine our police department—we have a damn fine police department,” Peters said. “Whoever is making those kind of comments doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, plain and simple. We have no intention of joining Meriden and they have no intention of joining us.”
The town has no intention of dissolving the police department and returning to the year 1935, “when we had constables hiding behind billboards to catch you speeding to get $2.50 for every arrest,” Peters added.
