FARMINGTON – After some discussion, selectmen voted unanimously to spend $4,000 on a redesign for a new police station after voters rejected the original plan on the Nov. 3 ballot.
After voters said no to the proposed $2.75 million building, town officials have spent the last month gathering feedback from voters on why the plan was rejected.
Among the reasons cited were size, cost, a generally poor economic outlook and the two plans recently approved to build a new Farmington elementary school and expand and renovate the high school, selectmen said they were told. The proposal was to build a one-story, 9,000 square foot building at the intersection of High and Farmington Falls Road on a town-owned lot to alleviate the cramped 1,500 square foot space the 14-officer department now uses.
“People wanted to know why it needed to be such a big building,” Selectman Jon Bubier said. The force is working fine with 1,500 square feet now why would they need 9,000 square feet, he said people asked him.
Specifically, residents called into question the proposed need for an exercise room and a conference room of the plan.
“Folks thought the building was too fancy,” said Town Manager Richard Davis. “The proposal now is to go back to the drawing board and make adjustments to lower costs.” Lower costs may mean conventional heating rather than the plan’s geothermal system, eliminating the exercise room and possibly some office space.
Although some voters thought eliminating the conference room, with a capacity of 70 people, would help save on costs, Davis and Police Chief Richard Caton III wanted it to remain in the plan. Regular training sessions need to be held but finding a room big enough to hold several departments for the training session is difficult, Caton said. As an example, someone suggested renting the Fairbanks School Meetinghouse for $25 per hour, but Caton said some of the training sessions last two weeks, which would add up to costing a lot if they had to rent the space.
Selectmen voted to ask for a redesigned plan from the Bunker & Savage architects who have been working on the project that will incorporate voters’ concerns and provide an overall budget estimate, along with one that pinpoints specific areas where cost could be reduced.
Funds to pay for the redesign will come from this year’s police department’s account.
What about expanding the Franklin County Sheriff’s office/detention center in Fairbanks to house both departments? A shared facility. I saw this in the comment board in the DB before… is there a reason it was not considered?
To be fair to the voters this need’s to be looked at very closely.
Even to the point of letting the voter’s decide if it is the right route to take.
Maybe it is time for us citizen’s to start a petition.(to make this happen)
But I doubt our police department head want’s to share space and save taxpayer’s money.
The day’s of receiving blank checks is over.
I find interesting the statement, “town officials have spent the last month gathering feedback from voters on why the plan was rejected.” How did they go about this? If they did anything more than read the Daily Bulldog and the Franklin Journal I didn’t hear of it.
Sounds like The Chief dosen’t want to give up much…..
Why is it Farmington’s Taxpayers responsibilty to host training sessions for other Towns?
Something to Think About…
Old Orchard Beach residents just approved the building of a new police station in OOB for 2.5 million. The new OOB police station will be 10,000 square feet. If OOB can build a 10,000 square foot police station for 2.5 million, why would it cost Farmington 4 million to build a 9,000 square foot building?
The current Old Orchard Beach police station, built in 1975, provides about 3,000 square feet for 19 officers, six dispatchers, an animal control officer, a court officer and an administrative assistant. During the summer, the OOB force adds about 50 part-time police officers, parking enforcement officers and clerical workers. If 10,000 square feet is enough to house all these personel in Old Orchard Beach, why does Farmington need 9,000 square feet?
Plans for the new Old Orchard Beach Police Station is as follows: 10,000-square-foot station include a larger, more-welcoming lobby area, more office space, a meeting room that can hold 50 people, locker space for officers, and other space to accommodate cells and storage.
Furthermore, Old Orchard Beach has found a way to build the new station without increasing taxes to residents.The debt would be paid off over 20 years through the town’s rescue billing fund. The rescue billing fund
collects an average of $300,000 to $400,000 a year from insurance companies, which are billed when policy holders use the town’s ambulance. The fund would be more than enough to pay the bond back at a rate of less than $250,000 each year.
Does Farmington have a rescue billing fund? If not, why not? Although Farmington’s fund may not be as big as Old Orchard Beach, I would think this would be something to look into. Maybe our town councilors should be talking to councilors from Old Orchard Beach. It appears that in these difficult times, the residents of OOB got it right.
Help with the math here town geniuses:
$2.75 mil/9000 sf = $305/sf
What’s a 70 person conference room, 750 sf? That gets me to $228,750 for a conference room.
BUT Davis claims that renting a room fo $25 an hour would cost too much? Well at that rate, $25/hour, you could rent the school for 1144 days. Or 57 days per year for 20 years. The Police Dept has 57 full days of conferences? Something isn’t adding up here….
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
Hmmmm….who’s back is getting scratched here????
Why didn’t they take the Nickerson building when it was available to them ? Davis will spare no expense and run taxes right through the roof like he did in Wilton. People are struggling and don’t need to pay more, more, and MORE taxes now.
Chris-
The Town of Farmington does not operate its own ambulance service. We are part of NorthStar Ambualnce Serivce under the auspices of the Hospital.
Yes, the 70 person conference room does sound excessive. They could continue to hold training at the Town Office, if they choose to host such training sessions.
The town officials need to wake up and realize that taxpayers cannot continue to pay and pay in the form of higher taxes every year. The two school projects will be more than enough.
The Police Department is more than adequate in size even though the Chief can cite data to the contrary and is looking toward the future in his desire for a large building. I doubt the day will come in the life of any new building to need to house a force as large as he states may be needed.
I”m not sure how many Architect plans where looked at. As taxpayers, it is clearly a very Important issue to us voters. I’m sure that “town officials” can tell quite a bit from reading these responses. Whatever the reason, it was shot down. It was clearly the “voice of the voter”. I am glad that we can “exercise our right”, In that respect. Cost and size need to be brought down.
The police are in need of working space now! Let’s do something worthwhile of that $4,000 and then let the taxpayers decide what we want.
As far as I know, the University still has available roughly about 1,100 sq ft of office space in the Facility Management building directly behind the current town office and were willing at one point to rent that space to the town. It would allow for very useable temporary space that would be adjacent to the current town office (60 paces) for either the CEO or Tax Assessor, or other town function that would fit that space, freeing up needed space right now in the current building for the police to relieve thier situation until we get a handle on the other options available to the tax payers. The $4,000 should get roughly about 4 months of time and other budgeted line items in our town budget, I’m sure, could be found to extend that time to the needed year or two in order to give the town’s tax payers more time to explore what other municipalities are doing to build their police capacity or other options in town that exists, such as the old Farmington shoe shop that is now standing empty and would have a possible impoundment area that could be used to generate town revenue by storage fees accessed instead of sending this service to Wilton.
I want to see our very professional Department in better working space, but the town needs to listen to the taxpayers and not assume that they have heard all options and certainly not by just slightly reduce the size of the proposed building.
In previous proposed plans by “experts” the town was given the suggested option of leaving the police & fire in the current building (make it the public safety facility) that already has the requested showers and “work out” room and large meeting spaces (3rd floor & basement & garage space if needed – like other fire departments do currently). This may mean moving the adminstration portion of our town government, which would not require the “special” spaces that is in the current proposed police facility (only an option).
Please listen to the taxpayers, but give our police force the working space they need now.
Can somebody explain to this newbie from away how it happened that in a relatively small town like this, where we supposedly know one another, we wound up with a set of town officials whose interests are different from those of the people who elected them? I sensed that this was true as soon as I started attending selectmen’s meetings, over a year ago. In theory they were public meetings. In practice my husband and I were often the only members of the public there (other than reporters), and neither Davis nor the selectmen had the least interest in my input. They very definitely had their own agenda, driven by their own values, and though they would grudgingly let me speak a few words, Steve Bunker would follow it with “Now I want to get back to what we’re here for.” It felt as if I wasn’t even in Farmington any more; and wherever I was it was hostile territory.
What business does our town manager have tenaciously promoting his own plans for the town, when he knows that they aren’t what we want. He probably won’t even be here permanently. Why should he want an expensive new police station that the citizens don’t want? I gather he was hired, not elected; but he was hired by elected officials? I think we need a whole new set of elected officials, though I don’t know how soon we can get them, under existing rules. People would have to start paying more attention to what is going on.