Bangor council to revisit station vote Majority supports prior decision to put police near airport

BANGOR – Despite an effort to keep the city’s next police station downtown, an informal poll of city councilors suggests the proposal lacks the needed political support.

As of Thursday night, only two of the City Council’s eight members, Annie Allen and Gerry Palmer, said they supported keeping the police station downtown.

The rest of the councilors – Chairman Dan Tremble, John Cashwell, Peter D’Errico, Frank Farrington, Geoffrey Gratwick and Richard Greene – said they intend to stand behind their vote last month to move the police station to a parcel near Bangor International Airport.

Tremble said Friday that the issue has generated nearly 20 e-mails and several telephone calls to councilors from residents and businesspeople.

“What I’m seeing is pretty much split [between the two locations],” Tremble said Friday. “In all honesty, I think once [supporters of the downtown option] hear all the pros and cons, most can understand why we went the way we did, even if they still prefer downtown.”

The site chosen for Bangor’s next police station now is occupied by the University of Maine System chancellor’s office but will become vacant next June, when UMS moves its 120 employees from Maine Avenue into the W.T. Grant Building downtown as part of a property swap with the city.

On Monday, the council will revisit its May 24 vote designating Maine Avenue as the site for the new police station.

The issue was added to Monday’s meeting agenda at the request of Allen, who said she had received telephone calls and e-mails from residents and businesspeople unhappy with the decision to scuttle 204 Main St., the original site chosen last September near the corner of Main and Cedar streets.

Allen was one of the eight who voted to locate the new police station off Maine Avenue. Also voting in favor of that site was Councilor David Nealley, who has since left the council because he moved to southern Maine.

In Bangor, individual councilors are permitted by tradition to add items to the meeting agenda. A motion and a second calling for reconsideration are needed to put the issue in front of the councilors. A decision to go back to the original site would require a simple majority vote.

Palmer, who cast the sole vote in opposition of the Maine Avenue site, said this week he would second Allen’s motion. He said the police station must be located in a site that is both visible and accessible to the public and that the downtown parcel best meets that need.

Tremble said he saw no need to reopen the matter, given the absence of new information and that the Main Street parcel, for which the city paid $775,000, was better suited to economic development.

D’Errico noted Thursday that the police department would maintain a presence downtown through a proposed substation to be located on the ground level of the Pickering Square Parking Garage. The satellite would house the department’s bike patrol, parking enforcement personnel and beat officers assigned to downtown.

D’Errico also pointed out that Police Chief Don Winslow, who originally favored the downtown option, had changed his position because of space concerns.

Winslow said last month he had been forced to make workspace concessions at the Main Street site to keep the project within its $6.5 million budget.

The city is working toward building a new police station because the current one on Court Street is too small and in such poor condition that the city’s insurer this spring terminated property and liability coverage.

The projected initial cost to develop the Maine Avenue site is $5.6 million. The estimated $1 million in savings to the city is negated, however, by lost tax and rental revenue.

With long-range development and other costs for the two sites being more or less equal, councilors based their decision on such criteria as emergency response time, space and parking needs, vehicle circulation, and visibility and security.