FARMINGTON – A committee of public safety officers, selectmen, planning board members and residents unanimously issued a recommendation that the board of selectmen consider a site on High Street to construct the proposed public safety building.
All committee members present voted to recommend situating the proposed $2.6 million, 9,000 square foot facility at the former 1.5-acre town garage lot, near where High Street and the Farmington Falls Road merge. The recommendation, issued to selectmen, was made after the committee reviewed a report compiled by Town Manager Richard Davis on possible alternative sites for the facility.
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Police Chief Richard Caton III (third from the left) describes the layout of the proposed public safety building to the other members of the needs committee Monday evening. The committee was visiting the site on High Street, which has been staked out to show the rough outlines of the project. |
At a March 31 meeting, members of the Police Station Space Needs Committee, who have been working on the project for months, asked Davis to explore the possibility of finding another site for the new police station, which is being designed with the goal of moving the Farmington Police Department out of the 1,575 square feet of space they currently occupy in the Farmington Municipal Building.
Bunker & Savage Architects have developed plans for a two-story colonial-style building set on the lot at the intersection to accommodate the 14-officer force.
Davis, in his report, laid out both well-explored options and new possibilities. These included the former Rite Aid building on the Wilton Road, the former Nickerson Buick/Oldsmobile building on the Farmington Falls Road and the University of Maine at Farmington’s Facility Management Building adjacent to the municipal building.
All of these properties had been previously explored, and Davis again noted the problems with each; the Rite Aid building would be expensive to lease, at $80,000 a year, and require extensive modifications to make it sutible for law enforcement use. The Nickerson building’s owners informed Davis they were not interesting in selling the property. UMF uses the lot in their building for parking, and is already juggling spots in order to meet the town’s parking requirements.
Davis looked at other possibilities as well. The site of the former Franklin Shoe site, which currently houses the Dyeables Shoe Company, isn’t very visible to the public. The owner of land near the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department facility was interested in selling, but only if he could sell the entire 89-acre lot. Another piece of property on the Wilton Road was rejected as being too small for the department’s purposes.
Selectman Ryan Morgan, who serves on the committee, noted the problems with several possibilities, namely the cost of purchasing, demolishing and rebuilding.
“It’s not only the cost of the additional property the town needs to buy,” Morgan said, “but it takes [the property] off the tax rolls.” Morgan went on to say that the High Street property had utilities, room to expand and a prime location near the heart of Farmington.
The final choice will likely be the residents of the town, possibly at a referendum-styled vote. The selectmen will also be involved in the process.
“It’s up to the people of Farmington,” Police Chief Richard Caton III said. “It’s their department and their building.”
I don’t see how this can have been unanimous, since I know Bill Crandall was on the committee, and he was against it.
For my part, I think the last thing we need is to see a police palace every time we turn off Route 2 up High St. Farmington doesn’t need more policing! It may sound corny, but we need more love. This is basically a friendly town, or that’s what I have always felt. Crime does occur, and no doubt the police perform a useful function in restraining it, but we are hardly overrun with crime. The police apparently don’t have enough to do, since they poke their noses where they aren’t needed, as in the incident Woody commented on a couple of years ago, where they were stopping college students on the street to see if they’d been drinking, or my own experience of having a Farmington cop come to my door to tell me that a neighbor didn’t like the e-mail I had sent her! If that’s the best use they can make of their time surely they could cut their staff in half and make do with the old building. And if we have so much spare tax money floating around, maybe we could do something beautiful with it, like build a new railroad bridge to replace the one we lost on the Whistlestop Trail, or…. give me time, I’ll think of a dozen other happy projects.
Dear Committee Members and Town Voters,
I had a family emergency last night and was unable to attend the meeting. I would like to state for the record that at this time, I do not vote in favor of a facility that will cost the town taxpayers close to three million dollars.
It is obvious that additional space is required by our police department given its current number of employees, however, I still feel that this issue was not given a fair or thoughtful approach from the beginning to other possible solutions, nor given the time for other options to develop. For example, architectural funds that were not available in any Town Meeting discussion were amazingly found and allocated, but yet there was “no more time” nor were there any further funds available to discuss possible options and ideas with the County.
I can not be supportive of this expensive undertaking of a “State of the Art” facility during a time when people are losing their jobs, homes, and health insurances. I still believe that other viable and less expensive options exist and I am hopeful that the town voters will make their voices heard on this issue.
Sincerely,
Bill Crandall
P.S. I’m not sure when it became a criteria that Police Stations be ” very visible to the public,” as in the first thing you see when you enter town, but I still consider the facility on High Street mentioned in the article to be quite visible.