Police will be getting the space they need

Coun. Keith Riel is right, Peterborough does not need two police stations.

But based on what Mayor Jeff Leal said at a city council meeting Monday, that’s not what Peterborough is going to get.

The city will have two buildings. It recently bought the former Calvary Pentecostal Church property on Lansdowne Street for $15 million. On Monday, council agreed to renovate both that building and the current downtown police station.

The estimated cost for both sites is another $44 million.

Riel argued against the two-site proposal, in which more than 100 working officers will stay downtown and administrative functions move to Lansdowne Street.

He favours moving the entire operation to the 106,000-squarefoot former church and selling the 30,000-square-foot Water Street headquarters. A small satellite office for two officers would maintain a downtown police presence.

Council disagreed, voting 8-2 to hire a consultant to develop the two-site plan.

But two city-owned buildings do not add up to two police stations. Leal noted Calvary Pentecostal will lease back its large worship space for five years, and said excess space in the building could be home to other city departments as need arises in the coming years.

In that scenario, Lansdowne Street becomes the police satellite Riel is looking for — an administration and office centre. Police work stays downtown in an upgraded headquarters.

The mayor, and council, will need to stand by that commitment if — or should we say when — police come looking to take control of the entire Lansdowne Street property.

The genesis of all this goes back nearly a decade, when the city decided the Water Street station was too small for more than 200 officers and civilian staff who worked there.

That was clearly the case. However, the solution delivered by consultants was a new 95,000-square-foot building, good for 25 years of projected growth. That footprint and the proposed design could only have been built on a large vacant space outside the downtown core.

Council insisted police stay downtown, where they are both an important signal of commitment to safety and order in the city core and an economic driver for local businesses.

But a subsequent search could not find a suitable downtown replacement site. That prompted the sudden pivot late last year to the two-site solution, based on a recommendation by police chief Stuart Betts that the former church would serve the service’s needs.

Betts has a different long-term view than the one Leal outlined. He has said police need a shooting range, which the Lansdowne Street building could accommodate. In December, he floated the idea of contracting with the provincial police college in Aylmer to develop a training site here.

City police could train both their own new officers and offer that service to other forces in this region. In that scenario, Peterborough could end up with not just two police stations, but their own headquarters and a regional policing facility.

That should not happen, and likely won’t. The city has enough trouble providing basic services a municipality is responsible for without adding a mini-police college to its resumé.

The city has been very supportive of its police service, and policing in general.

Two years ago, council agreed to five-year plan to hire 49 new officers and civilian staff when the service’s own consultant said 13 would be enough. That led to double-digit annual budget increases, far beyond what other departments get. Now the service is getting all the new space it needs, and then some.

Acquiring the former church as part of that commitment will be, as the mayor said, good value for money spent — assuming it plays out the way he described.