Set In Stone
Plans for a New Police Station
East Cocalico Township has been quietly working on plans for a new police station since at least June 2004. Originally the plan was to include all Township offices in a new building to be built either at the former Four Seasons Produce site on Route 272 (that was to also have the proposed Rec. Center). The plan is now to have just the Police Department in a new building.
This spring, the architect working on the project gave a presentation on a plan for an elaborate new police station to be constructed next to the existing township building. The estimated cost was stated at $2.5 to $2.9 Million for the new building.
Robert Roggenburg, a former member of the Planning Commission, was also on the building committee when the current township building was built. Since he was familiar with the design of the current building, he pointed out to the supervisors that the existing building was designed to be expanded at a later date. When he asked them if they had ever considered expanding the current building, he was told that had never been considered.
For the supervisors meeting on June 3, 2009, Bob and I worked together to give a presentation on what an addition to the new building would look like, and what it would cost. I prepared a "photoshopped" picture of the existing building to show about what the size would be to add the same amount of additional space as proposed in the new building (not as a representation of what the building would actually look like, but to show the size and that it would fit on the site):
The estimate I got for the cost of adding enough space to give the police department the same amount of space as they would have in the proposed separate building was about $1.5 Million versus the nearly $3 Million for their proposal. And what was the supervisors reaction to a suggestion that might be able to save the taxpayers over $1 Million? Without ever considering our proposal they set about finding excuses why that wouldn't work. They came up with four reasons why that wouldn't work, none of which seemed to be major problems that couldn't be solved fairly easily, or tolerated (some inconvenience relative to police activities) for a while in exchange for a very significant cost savings. The way it was presented was also very curious. At the end of the next supervisors meeting (June 17, 2009 - see page 4), according to the minutes "Mr. Mackley stated that he is not asking for any questions but wanted to respond..." apparently meaning that he didn't want any discussion on the issue at this meeting (probably in violation of the Sunshine Act).
A lengthy letter to the Ephrata Review describing the situation, was written by Bob Roggenburg and published on July 1, 2009. Supervisor Alan Fry wrote a response to that letter in the Review, which was published in the Review on July 8, 2009. In this letter, Mr. Fry stated "...there are currently no plans for the construction of a new police station site project forward at this time." citing that the "economic circumstances" have changed as the reason. He also added "...I am equally concerned about how our tax dollars are spent and therefore am striving for a fiscally conservative budget for the township that meets the needs of our community in a safe and efficient way."
The national and world-wide economic collapse started back in 2008. By early 2009, the stock market was crashing, and the township supervisors would already have been aware that their Police Pension Fund had lost nearly $1.5 Million in 2008. If Mr. Fry is so concerned about how our tax dollars are being spent, then why did the supervisors pass a motion, made by Mr. Fry, to spend up to an additional $10,000. for "further building design work" for the project at their workshop meeting on April 1, 2009 (page 4, 4th paragraph)? April Fool's Day???
According to figures provided by the Township, a total of $49,068.75 had been spent on this project as of the end of June 2009:
© Ken McCrea 2009