Be creative, Bangor; keep police downtown

On 10 a.m. Saturday, July 10, a group of Bangor residents will meet at 240 Main St. to initiate a petition drive through the streets of Bangor. The purpose is to garner enough signatures (2,274) from voters who want the following order to appear on November’s ballot: “That the Council Order 04-155 is hereby rescinded [to develop a new police building at 107 Maine Avenue near the airport] and City staff is hereby authorized and directed to take the necessary steps to proceed with the location and construction of the police headquarters building at 240 Main Street [in downtown Bangor].”

Why is it so important to support this initiative and sign the petition? Bangor citizens are left with no alternative if they want to keep the police station downtown or at least take a closer look at the issue. After two years of weighing alternatives, the 240 Main Street site was purchased for $775,000, and $400,000 worth of plans and preparations were made. Police Chief Don Winslow and other city officials were satisfied with this location and construction was to begin in June 2004.

This spring Chief Winslow was told to cut $1.2 million from his construction budget, making the new plan unsafe and unworkable. Acknowledging that the downtown location had superior visibility and access, he still gave the nod to 107 Maine Ave., an expansive locale near the airport. The property was acquired in a land “swap” that included moving approximately 120 workers from the University of Maine chancellor’s office at 107 Maine Ave. into the top three floors of the Grant’s building at West Market Square. What a boon to the downtown that the city has been working so hard to revitalize!

Now, in the name of expansion potential and false, short-term economy, the rug gets pulled out and rolled up. In less than two weeks the City Council reversed its original decision, voted 6-2 to move police headquarters to Maine Avenue and, by the same vote (even after extensive input from a broad base of citizens), refused to allow two weeks for further examination of this radical change in plans.

We were told that 240 Main St. is too valuable as development property to be wasted on a non-taxable municipal building like the police station. However, downtown momentum is based, in large part, on perceptions of the city and its services; and businesses, developers, builders and their customers and occupants gravitate towards service and safety. Aren’t we sending a mixed message to developers about where the action is with this move?

We were also told that while the Main Street site may provide inadequate space in five years, the Maine Avenue locale will have lots of room for vehicles and expansion to help prepare for the “regionalization” of 70 years from now, with Bangor at its hub. Is this another surefire plan for Bangor’s future success akin to the urban renewal of the ’60s? With this new brand of “sprawl” we could end up with buildings in the downtown and no people to occupy them!

Surely we can find a way to expand the Main Street site. Why not build up instead of out as other modern cities do? As a rule, police stations do not move from a city’s hub, where there is already the greatest concentration of pedestrians. When a visitor or nighttime walker in need of help at our new waterfront complex, racino or civic center is looking for the police station, will we point to a place they can walk to or direct them to the Maine Avenue site near the airport?

Chief Winslow and the other officers will do their very best to provide protection that is needed throughout the city. However, response time cannot be equated with presence, and “patrols” do not provide the same sense of security for people as do the comings and goings in a police station by officers and civilians who drive or walk to work to and from a downtown headquarters.

Of course a crucial piece of this puzzle also has to do with real vs. perceived safety. Winslow notes that 22 percent of the calls currently made to the station are in the downtown. According to Dennis Marble, director of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, this statistic does not demonstrate the higher preponderance of assaults and other victim-based crimes that occur in downtown. How much greater would this number be without the downtown presence of a police station? How much more will this presence be needed with the added development we are all yearning to witness?

Some questions are not easily answered with the statistics that people are so fond of quoting. How do we estimate the value of “presence” to developers or the sense of security provided by a police station you can get to without hopping on a bus or driving in your car? And, while it may be argued that the downtown is not the geographical center of Bangor, haven’t we all been working on having it feel like the center? Isn’t this what the renovations, museums, brick walkways, festivals and new businesses have all been about?

We all need time to think this through. For a community like ours that is reinventing itself, let’s be creative and find a way to keep the police station in the downtown where it is most needed. Getting the petition signatures required to place this issue on the ballot in the fall will give us time to examine these unknowns before we make a decision we may otherwise regret.

Suzanne Kelly is a resident of Bangor.