Bangor council stands by Maine Ave. police site

BANGOR – A move to keep the city’s next police station downtown proved short-lived Monday night.

Despite some persuasive arguments in favor of a Main Street location, city councilors voted 6-2 to stick with the site chosen last month – the soon-to-be-vacated University of Maine System chancellor’s offices near Bangor International Airport.

Though city officials said some work will begin on the police station this year, the property won’t be fully vacated until next June, when UMS moves its 120 employees from 107 Maine Ave. into the W.T. Grant Building downtown as part of a property swap with the city.

Before casting his vote with the majority, Council Chairman Dan Tremble said he had run into numerous police officers in the past few weeks and virtually all of them said, “Just get us into a new station – wherever you put it, we can do our job.”

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.

Among the reasons councilors cited for supporting the airport site were that it offered the space the department needs and it has won the support of Police Chief Don Winslow.

Winslow, who originally preferred the downtown site, now favors the larger site near the airport because of space concessions the department already has had to make to keep the downtown development budget within its $6.5 million budget.

In addition, the city might soon recoup the $775,000 it spent to acquire the downtown site, Councilor John Cashwell noted, and had yet to negotiate a buyout with the owner of a radiator shop that would have to be relocated to pave the way for construction.

Common threads that ran through the comments of those who supported the downtown site were concerns that:

. The loss of the police station might lead to the loss of other public services.

. The airport site was less accessible to many in the community, namely some of those who live downtown and have no means of transportation. (Chief Winslow, however, noted that a recent tally showed surprisingly few walk-in users.)

. Downtown needs a strong police presence because of the types of incidents experienced there in recent years, including a murder, stabbings and other violent crimes.

. The airport site might be hard for visitors to locate in a crisis.

Perhaps the most vocal critic of the city’s plan was Rep. Patricia Blanchette, a former council chairman, who attended Monday as a resident and taxpayer.

Among other things, Blanchette said the decision to move the police headquarters to the airport was made in relative haste and with too little public input. She said residents overwhelmingly preferred the downtown option, which she said was more cost-effective.

“You don’t need to have a kingdom sitting on 5 acres at the airport,” she said.

The issue was added to Monday’s meeting agenda at the request of Councilor Annie Allen, who said she had received telephone calls and e-mails from residents and business people unhappy with the decision to scuttle the downtown site located near the corner of Main and Cedar streets.

When it came to a vote, only two of the City Council’s eight members, Gerry Palmer and Allen, supported keeping the police station downtown. The rest of the councilors -Tremble, John Cashwell, Peter D’Errico, Frank Farrington, Geoffrey Gratwick and Richard Greene – reaffirmed the decision last month to move the police to Maine Avenue.