Proposal in works for police station

For years, Southborough officials have known the town needs a new police station. Now they are biting the bullet and preparing a proposal to build a new facility that they said could cost as much as $5.5 million.

"We're working on top of people," Sergeant Sean James said while leading a recent tour of the station, which was built in 1929 as an elementary school.

"We don't have space. During our shifts, we're always looking for room to write reports and interview people."

James said the booking room, where suspects are taken after they are arrested, is especially dangerous. The small room, packed with equipment, can barely fit two people sitting down. "The suspect is right on top of the officer," said James. "If we have a wrestling match in here, the odds of someone getting hurt in this confined office are going to be high."

Police Chief William Webber said Southborough has outgrown the station. Fifteen years ago, he said, the town had around 6,600 residents. Now it has 10,000 residents and many new commercial properties that bring workers into town every day. Over that time, the department has added six officers, growing to 16 now, he said. The figure doesn't include five civilian dispatchers and other workers. The department's budget is around $1.5 million.

The officers have become used to the station's conditions, Webber said. But these days, with more growth expected over the next decade, he said, it is time for a change. "We've acclimatized ourselves to this building over the years and taken things for granted: the mice, the ants, the showers," he said.

The current station is also becoming pricier to maintain, said Webber. The town is preparing to spend $21,000 to redo the booking room, but that doesn't fix the overall space problem, he said. Over the past few years, the town has also spent $100,000 on new heating and air conditioning systems, and new bathrooms for the department's two female officers.

The town has already spent $50,000 to have architects investigate what might be needed in a new station. Now officials are preparing to hire another architect to draw up a schematic design, using $90,000 appropriated by Town Meeting in April.

Officials expect to be able ask Town Meeting voters to appropriate more money for the final design next spring. The final, and largest, cash request would come before Town Meeting members and voters in April 2010. If everything goes according to plan, construction would begin that summer, said Webber.

Selectwoman Bonnie Phaneuf said she supports building a new station, but said she would work to control a new station's cost. Officials rejected an initial idea of building a new public-safety complex that would combine police and fire stations as being too expensive, she said. The town's firehouse, built in the 1977, doesn't need to be replaced immediately, she added.

Tom McCarthy, a member of the Municipal Facilities Committee, which is overseeing the new station proposal, said committee members whittled down the initially proposed new station from 18,000 square feet to a planned 12,000 square feet. The current station is 9,500 square feet, but the building's large stairwells, which are designed to accommodate whole classes of children, take up much of that space, said Webber.

"I'm not interested in paying more taxes than anyone else in town but there are certain basic things you have to spend money on," said McCarthy. "We've made sure that we don't overbuild and we don't gild a lily."