FARMINGTON – A public hearing on the proposed $2.75 million police station will be held 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13 in the downstairs meeting room at the Municipal Building.
On Sept. 16, selectmen and the town’s budget committee voted to recommend the question go to voters on Nov. 3.
Proposed for 14-officer force is a 9,000 square foot, single story colonial-style building set on a 1.5 acre town-owned lot at the intersection of High Street and Farmington Falls Road. Those in favor of the new building say it’s time to find a solution to the chronic space shortage of the Farmington Police Department, which is currently housed in 1,575 square feet of the town municipal building.
The building would have a single main entrance for the public that faces Farmington Falls Road. Two entrances off Farmington Falls Road and High Street would access the parking lot located on the north side of the building.
Conference room, reception area, break room, offices, interview rooms, storage facilities, exercise and locker rooms and a two-bay garage, are included in the plans.
The building would be heated by a geothermal system and would also house an emergency generator for power outages. The current plan calls for 69 parking spaces, and provides some space for expansion should that be needed.
The estimated annual tax impact of the project would be $50 on a $100,000 property valuation. The estimate is based on borrowing $2,750,000 for a 30-year period at 4.5 percent interest rate. At that rate, with a principal of $2.75 million and with an interest payment of $1,919,918 over 30 years, the debt service payment would total $4,660,918.
In fulfilling the statue’s requirement that the board of selectmen and the town’s budget committee first recommend by a majority vote within a 45 day period of the Nov. 3 ballot the question of a police station, two meetings of each board were held a month ago.
In the budget committee’s discussion of the project, the question of how much it will cost taxpayers, especially since the $63.5 million Mt. Blue High School expansion project had just been approved by voters. The police station will annually cost a Farmington taxpayer about $50 per $100,000 property valuation and the high school project is estimated at an impact of $25 per $100,000 property valuation for a total increase per taxpayer of $75 per year.
The construction of the new $18.9 million Mallett School, the vast amount of which will be paid for by the state, will cost the school district’s taxpayers $75,000 over a 20-year-period, Davis said, which works out to a share of about $28,000 for all of Farmington’s taxpayers over the 20-year-period.
The police department is holding a second open house from 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 14 so voters can see where the department is currently situated. Caton added that people can call during regular working hours for a tour anytime.
“It’s horrible under the conditions we’re working now,” he said in support of the project.
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Someone please explain why the jail cannot house both the sheriff’s office and the Farmington PD?
I encourage all Farmington Voters to go to the polls and vote on this issue. It seems when one adds up all of the building costs presented it doesn’t seem like much, perhaps just shy of an additional $200 per average style home valued at $150K when all else is said and done in our typical annual budget increases. But what hasn’t been indicated anywhere is the additional building and maintenance costs that go along with all of these buildings. Nor the fact that taxpayers desperately need a break at some point in their taxes, not the continued march upward that has happened over and over in this town.
Farmington has been notorious at adding building budgets as separate budget items in our town budgets so that the actual costs of these great department expenditures are kept from the public and placed into pockets of tax amounts seemingly unrelated to the actual department’s budgets. For example, just one line item for the new garage budget was for the building reserve, the first year out the town wanted $20,000 which was pared down at the first town meeting, but has increased since that time. That does not include the additional expenses of insurance, custodial, or energy usage of these buildings. What budgets have been drawn up for these new building that the taxpayers has not been informed about in this process of presenting these building projects and will be tacked on as the price of doing business?
I agree that the police currently need more space, but there are still options that in my opinion were not allowed true and free public discussion on that I believe could prove to be less costly and certainly give us a chance to look at the true needs of the future police services for our region. For example, there exists a space where the County Extension Office formerly occupied that would serve well as the Code Enforcement Space, there by freeing up the whole basement in the current town office for additional police needs (office space, interview rooms, storage, etc) as well as providing better access to the CEO office. The current town office already has showers and weight room facilities and rather than duplicate those same costs in the new building, it seems prudent to keep the Fire and Police services close together to use those same types of building needs. When one removes the duplicated square footage of the showers, weight room, and large gathering hall (for public meetings in the proposed building), then a move to rent a space from the University that is less than sixty paces from the back door of the town office seems like a prudent option to consider. Another option – perhaps we should be moving the administrative portion of our town government and not our police services, as showers and weight room costs would not need to be included in such a new building?
We also have a building that is currently advertising for 50,000 square feet of space in the same area of town (the old Farmington shoe shop), that could also have an impoundment area for vehicles already in place (someone should ask Collins Garage in Wilton how much can be made by impounding people’s cars! – perhaps a new revenue source for the town?). It is the same type of structure as being presented by the Town Manager and Chief of Police, that is, it is on a cement slab and is one story, the only difference is it won’t cost $3 million dollars to build because it is already there and modifications could be easily done to address any interior space needs.
In my opinion, the proposed 9,000 sq ft Police building has been pushed through this town’s system without true open discourse or the thought towards other options for the future needs of this town’s infrastructure. The building proposed is too expense for the size of the facility that we’ll get, and that the building costs are just the start of the true cost to the taxpayers.
Please vote.
Well said Mr. Crandall. I’m concerned that in a slow economy, our town seems to be willing to spend more and more money. A few hundred dollars per year for the next thirty years, invested properly, could pay a child’s education and we’re building a new facility? The need for space is there and that is understood, but at what price? And taxpayers have to pay for it. A few hundred dollars per year where home foreclosures and job losses are at all time highs; I think the timing is bad and other options should at least be explored before we start writing checks for a brand new facility.