Bristol voters to consider public safety building

BRISTOL — Voters attending the March 12 Town Meeting will decide whether to overrule the Bristol Budget Committee and approve a $4.9 million public safety building to replace the current police and fire stations.

Approval would displace the police for a year while the current station is demolished to make way for the new building. Chief Jim McIntosh anticipates forming partnerships with the town of New Hampton and officials in Belknap and Merrimack counties to ensure a smooth transition, including having a place to hold prisoners after booking. He said the town would establish a substation within the fire station to handle citizen complaints.

The new facility tentatively would be completed by the summer of 2023.

In order to finance the project, the town would float a bond for the $4,875,500 anticipated cost, with the first payments not due until next year. The selectboard has not decided on the length of the loan; extending it would lower the payments but increase the amount of interest paid.

The budget committee in a split 2-3 vote decided not to recommend the project, but the selectboard believes that the time is right. Interest rates remain low right now, but are anticipated to begin rising soon.

“If we don’t do it now, I don’t think it will ever happen,” said Don Milbrand, selectboard chair.

Without the budget committee’s support, approval of the project would exceed the statutory 10% cap on expenditures beyond their recommended budget. Exceeding that cap is only allowed for bond projects, and only if there is a notice on the warrant article making note of that fact.

The article sits at the front of Saturday’s agenda.

This is the first time the town has formally considered a public safety building, but there has been discussion for decades about the need to upgrade the police station. In recent years, recognition of needs at the fire station also entered the discussion.

Background

The current police facility was built more than 50 years ago to serve as a municipal courtroom and selectboard office, utilizing money originally intended for an opera house.

When businessman Charles E. Mason, a Knight Templar Mason and a Democrat who had served two terms as a Bristol selectman, died on November 20, 1900, his will stipulated that, once his wife died, the remainder of his estate would be used for “a building to be forever owned and maintained by [the] Town of Bristol, as a town-house and opera-house”.

By the time Mason’s wife died more than six decades later, on January 16, 1963, the estate was valued at $71,141.01 — an amount that Bristol selectmen, through their attorney, Richard W. Upton, successfully argued in Grafton County Superior Court would be insufficient to build an opera house.

The court concluded that, “The use of the residue of said trust estate for the acquisition of a town office building by the Town of Bristol to provide office space for town officers and record storage space, with suitable recognition for the name of the testator, would be a practical purpose, as nearly as possible in accord with the general charitable intent of the testator.”

The ruling stipulated: “[T]here shall be one room of suitable size in such building designed as a multiple-purpose room and reserved for public conferences, official hearings or court proceedings, which shall be suitably designated by permanent marker as ‘The Charles E. Mason Room’, which shall be always available to the general public for musical rehearsals and concerts for limited audiences, when not needed for public business.”

That “multi-purpose room” became the Bristol Municipal Court, situated on the lower level of the new brick office building. There would be no musical activities, but in order to satisfy the superior court ruling, the selectboard placed a plaque on the door of the closet-size judge’s chambers, naming it the “Mason Music Room”.

After the municipal courts were absorbed by the district court system, Bristol turned the courtroom space over to the Bristol Police Department. During the 1990s, when the town built a wooden addition to the building, the police department was able to expand to two levels, but remained cramped for space.

Over the next two decades, several building projects were offered to address police space and safety needs, but it was not until 2018, when voters approved the purchase of the former LRGHealthcare building on School Street to serve as new town offices, that the police department appeared to have the space it needed. The department took over the entire Lake Street building with plans to reconfigure the space as necessary.

It was during the space needs study leading to the School Street purchase that fire department needs gained recognition.

Fire station

The Bristol Fire Department had been operating out of cramped quarters on South Main Street when firefighters took it upon themselves to build a new station on Lake Street during the early 1970s. Using mostly volunteer labor, they built the station that the department still uses today.

Over the years, fire equipment became larger, and the town replaced Emmons Ambulance Service with municipal emergency medical services, creating a shortage of space at the fire station. Currently, there are only inches to spare between the trucks garaged there. Fire Chief Ben LaRoche said that newer ambulances also are larger, so when it comes time to buy a new ambulance in a couple of years, there will be insufficient space in the truck bays.

The department currently keeps its forestry truck in a rough lean-to behind the station.

There are more serious problems for firefighters: There is no secure area to place firefighting gear that may be covered with toxic residue following a call. The gear is hung on racks just inches from the trucks.

The training room also serves as an emergency operations center, emergency shelter, and lunchroom. The two cots available for firefighters who are between shifts are situated in the midst of operations. The office area where the administrative assistant works also serves as the dispatch center and it can become crowded during emergencies.

LaRoche has looked into possible additions and repairs to the building, but estimates that it would cost more than $2 million to address the needs on-site, and an addition would reduce the space available for parking on the small lot.

Public safety building

McIntire and LaRoche concluded that a public safety building that serves both departments would be the most cost-effective solution for the town. Although McIntire has not gone after cost estimates for additions to the police station in order to provide safer access and a better layout for operations, he thinks the costs would be in line with LaRoche’s estimate. Taking that approach would involved putting more money into an old building that also has structural problems.

The two chiefs envision a building similar to the public safety building in Farmington, with operations on one level and dorm space upstairs. It would be large enough to garage the fire equipment, segregate contaminated clothing, and provide for training and emergency shelter on the fire side. Police officers would have a sally port, allowing them to bring prisoners into the building in a safe and confidential manner, and there would be sufficient storage for evidence that sometimes must be held for 30 years, as well as areas for lockers and showers.

The warrant article would cover the cost of obtaining a final design, taking down the existing police station, and building the new facility, using the current lot and an adjoining piece of property that the town acquired a few years ago.

Bristol Town Meeting will take place on Saturday, March 12, at 9 a.m. at Newfound Regional High School.