Brewer officials eye public safety facility needs
Monday, April 02, 2007 - Bangor Daily News 

As the city has grown, so has its need for bigger and better public safety facilities.

When the current City Hall was built at 80 North Main St. in 1937, Wilson Street wasn’t developed and if a cop was needed or if someone had to go to court, they would head to the city office.

"Everything was in that building — the municipal court, police station and jail, library and city clerk office," Archie Verow, who retired as Brewer City Clerk on Friday after 40 years of service, said during a January interview.

The three jail cells "are still there" but were changed into storage space when the downstairs was renovated a decade ago, he said.

"The third cell had a window to the outdoors, the other two didn’t," Verow said. "So if you were thrown in there; you wanted the third cell. When the [South Main Street] public safety building was built, they closed the cells."

The now deteriorating South Main Street facility was built in 1958 and at first housed the fire department and the municipal court. At that time, the police department "worked right out of the basement of our City Hall and they had four officers and one car," Police Chief Perry Antone said on Friday.

Within the next decade, county governments took over court systems for communities statewide and the city’s police force moved into the space once occupied by the closed municipal court at the South Main Street fire station. The two departments have shared the building for the last half century.

"There was a small cellblock here [for the municipal court] … then the cells were part of the police station," Fire Chief Rick Bronson said Friday.

The prisoner cells were used up until the early 1970s, when the federal government began requiring that inmates be monitored around the clock and the city began its partnership with the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department to send all inmates and handle all bookings at the county jail in Bangor.

Nowadays, detectives occupy the space where the cells were located, and skeleton keys used to open the jail cells are about all that remain from the former prisoner lockup areas, Antone said.

The South Main Street facility has outlived its usefulness because both departments have grown over the years. There is a lack of work space and storage space, and known water leaks and possible mold issues, Antone and Bronson said.

For example, the six-officer police force that moved into the facility decades ago is now 22 members strong.

Brewer city leaders have listened and discussed the appeals for more space for several years and in January decided to purchase nearly 3 acres on Parkway South, adjacent to Interstate 395, at a cost of $275,000, for a new public safety facility.

Trees have been cleared and local construction firm Nickerson & O’Day and WBRC Architects-Engineers of Bangor have been selected as the design-build team.

The site provides good access to major roadways, which should make response times shorter, and it is located next to the high school and just down the street from the planned elementary-middle school.

"It’s going to be a phenomenal location for public safety," Antone said.

The city annually has placed funds into a reserve account to help pay for a new facility and also is planning to use funds set aside last year to move City Hall, with the remaining money coming from a bond, City Manager Steve Bost said.

Because the project is in the design phase, no details about size or costs have been released, but both Antone and Bronson have a required needs list, and a wish list.

For the police department, extra professional space for officers to work in and modern technology are two items that are desperately needed, Antone said.

"For us to conduct an interview, the law requires it to be recorded and videotaped, and we don’t have an interview room," he said. "The main room that’s used is a report writing room, a training room, a meeting room, a lunchroom and it’s our record [and paper] storage room.

"If an interview is taking place, we don’t do the other functions so it slows us down," Antone said.

Newer, cleaner office space for officers with "appropriate air exchange," additional locker room space with a shower and separate areas for men and women, space for specialty equipment, and a sally port to safely bring people into the building are items on the needs list, he said.

"We don’t have a sally port," Antone said. "We just walk them through the building to the all-purpose room."

A fitness room, bays for each cruiser and a training-conference room are on the wish list.

On the fire department side, more bunk space for firefighters is needed, Bronson said, adding he would like to see six truck bays and a truck wash bay that could be shared with the police department.

Right now the trucks are washed in their bays and "everything stays wet and rusts," he said.

Both department leaders also want room to grow so the facility will last for decades to come.

"We want a place the citizens of Brewer can be extremely proud of, and to meet the public safety needs for years to come," Antone said.

A copyright article from the Bangor Daily News, Monday, April 2, 2007.