County considering new safety complex
BALLSTON SPA >> Recent studies have ranked Stillwater among the safest small communities in the state and nation.
So town supervisor Ed Kinowski’s top priority as Saratoga County Board of Supervisors chairman comes as no surprise.
In June, a presentation to the board is expected on plans for a new $20 million-plus public safety building, with the possibility of a 2018 groundbreaking.
“I’d love to see groundbreaking next year,” said Kinowski. “We have land, why not use it? Interest rates are low and the county has a great bond rating. It’s positioned us well to make appropriate improvements throughout the county. A new public safety facility will set us up for the future.”
What he and other county officials see is upstate New York’s fastest-growing population, nearly 230,000, which is only expected to keep growing.
The question is whether the board’s 22 other supervisors will support the project.
“It’s a budgetary thing,” Kinowski said.
Plans call for putting the county dispatch center, probation department, public health, emergency services and some sheriff’s administrative staff under one roof in a new complex, located near the county jail and Public Works Department, in Ballston
Spa.
At present, probation is on West High Street in Ballston Spa, emergency services occupies basement space beneath the county courthouse, and public health is in Saratoga Springs. Some offices are cramped and outdated.
A subcommittee chaired by Galway Supervisor Paul Lent, former county emergency services director, has been working on proposals for a new facility with the Voorheesvillebased firm, Pacheco Ross Architects, which specializes in public safety buildings. Lent also chairs the boards’s Public Safety Committee.
The June presentation is expected to include projections about size and cost, which could be from $20 million to $30 million, Kinowski said.
The presentation will include considerable input from the Buildings and Grounds Committee, chaired by Northumberland Supervisor Bill Peck.
Kinowski said supervisors seriously started working on the project last summer, although a preliminary engineering study was done roughly a decade ago. Plans were sidetracked by the Great Recession of 2008 and other priorities such as sale of the former county nursing home in Ballston spa, and landfill in Northumberland, which have put the county in a better financial position, county Administrator Spencer Hellwig said.
“We’ve got virtually no debt,” he said.
While considering plans for a new public safety building, county officials are also aware of a much more expensive project looming on the horizon -a new county jail.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has granted the sheriff’s office a waiver, allowing for temporary double bunking, with the provision that the county address plans for a bigger jail by 2019, Hellwig said.
The cost of a new public safety building is a “drop in the bucket” compared to cell space, he said.
The jail’s male inmate population isn’t always overcrowded, but does experience sudden rises, particularly in summer, when numbers exceed recommended limits, Hellwig said.
Even if cells designated for females are empty, they can’t be used because male and female inmates are housed separately.
Kinowski said the rampant opiate problem is a major contributor to overcrowding at the jail, while also putting a financial strain on other county departments such public health and mental health.