[ccfic caption-text format="plaintext"]
By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
Several public hearings are planned to give residents an overview of the town’s plans to build a new police station for the Westwood Police Department on the site of the existing station on High Street.
The public hearings will take place on March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Downey School cafeteria, and on March 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Thurston cafeteria.
Westwood voters will give the final approval for the project at the spring town meeting, which is scheduled for May 2 at 7:30 p.m. Westwood voters previously approved a set of construction projects at the fall town meeting designed to prepare the existing site for the new station, which included building an extension of Deerfield Avenue and creating more parking spaces for the new building.
“What we want to do now is present to the public what the final design proposal looks like for the new police station, and answer any questions folks have about it,” explained Westwood Town Administrator Mike Jaillet.
Jaillet explained that Westwood has needed a new police station since he began serving as town administrator 28 years ago.
“I have been here for 28 years, and back in the day when I hired my first police chief, the first words out of his moth was ‘oh my god, this place is tiny and inadequate for what it should be,’” Jaillet recalled.
Since that time, the problems with the police station have only become worse, according to Jaillet. The building is too small for the department, it has code compliance issues, it lacks the space to meet gender diversity requirements, the exterior of the building is not secure for suspect intake and outtake, it creates many inefficiencies for the department, and more.
“We are using some space that is totally inappropriate because it does not meet today’s codes,” Jaillet said. “The space that we do meet codes is tiny.”
The new police station will feature 20,400 square feet of space, according to a presentation on the project – over triple the space of the existing police station’s 6,144 square feet. The total cost of the project is expected to be between a low estimate of $13.88 million and a high estimate of $15.89 million. A final cost for the project will be determined once bids from contractors are received in March.
The new station will include a number of needed components according to the presentation, including a safer intake, booking and detention area, space to meet modern evidence and retention requirements, community rooms that can be used for public functions as well as police training, and dedicated space for weapon storage and animal control.
The town has been waiting to go through with the project until it had the fiscal ability to complete the project. According to Jaillet, the recently opened University Station project has provided enough extra income to the town to make the project viable.
Jaillet stressed that the town will not raise property taxes through an override to pay for the project. The town will instead pay for the 30-year bond that will fund the project through an annual debt service allocation from University Station revenue.
“We will not have to ask people to give an override,” Jaillet said.
The current timetable for the project, assuming the proposal at town meeting is passed, calls for construction to begin immediately after the new Deerfield Avenue extension is completed, which is slated for July 1. Construction is estimated to take about a year and a half to complete.
