City officials commission ‘spatial needs’ study for fire, police depts.
WOONSOCKET — The city has commissioned a preliminary study to determine whether the aging collection of buildings that house its police and fire stations is sufficient, in size and adaptability, to serve the future needs of the public safety division.
Public Safety Director Eugene Jalette said the city has hired the Center for Public Safety of Winter Park, Fla., to do the work. The research group specializes in evaluating the spatial requirements of public safety workforces and the condition of the buildings that house them.
For less than $2,000, Jalette said, a representative will tour the city’s police department and four fire stations – some of which are over a century old – and compile a report with recommendations. Jalette said the report isn’t supposed to be definitive, but serve as an aid to officials in formulating a long-range plan for modernizing the facilities. Jalette said the administration hasn’t determined yet whether such a plan could be developed using in-house resources or if it would be necessary to solicit additional outside help.
The broad strokes were sketched by Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, who announced the initiative in a press release.
“Making sure that our police and fire departments have adequate facilities to meet modern-day requirements is an important part of our duty to protect our residents,” she said. “This spatial needs assessment will identify our current public safety facility strengths and weaknesses and will provide us with a vision for future actions.”
In a related move, the City Council is expected to act on a resolution Monday that opens the door to soliciting bids to study the housing needs of the public safety division. Any work worth more than $2,000 must be advertised for competitive bidding.
Jalette said members of the administration and the city council discussed the need for evaluating public safety resources at a work session recently. The discussion touched on questions of manpower in the police and fire departments, but the scope of the current effort does not include staffing levels. It’s limited to what the administration is calling “a structural and spatial needs assessment” for the police and fire departments.
The council resolution uses similar terminology, calling for an analysis and recommendations covering “station locations, apparatus and response-time reduction.” It also instructs the administration to solicit bids by March 23 and sets a deadline for vendors to make offers no later than April 23.
The study will focus on five structures – the headquarters of the Woonsocket Police Department, 242 Clinton St., and four firehouses, including Station No. 2 – headquarters of the Woonsocket Fire Department,
5 Cumberland Hill Road, plus smaller stations on North Main Street, Providence Street and Mendon Road. Not included is a fifth station in the Fairmount section that has not been used for dispatching apparatus for several years.
Of the entire collection of buildings, police headquarters, built in 1974, may be the most modern. The fire stations are generally older and at least one, on North Main Street, is pre20th century. City records say the station was built in 1880. The online property database doesn’t list the date when Station No. 2 was built, but Jalette said he believes it may have been erected in the 1920s.
Baldelli-Hunt said one question she hopes the study will answer is whether investing in upgrades to such buildings is a cost-effective option.
“What you don’t want to do is throw good money after bad,” she said. “If it makes sense, it could potentially say, ‘build a public safety complex,’ which isn’t to say we’ll do it. It could be quite costly to do that.”
But officials say a study could serve as a a tool for developing a plan for the transformation of the public safety division’s housing assets that might be implemented over a period of years. According to its web site, among the services the Center for Public Safety provides as part of a spatial needs assessment is budget analysis and the identification of costs and financing options.
“We expect the assessment to be a great planning tool that will help us evaluate the facilities that we have and will present us with a realistic roadmap for either renovating or replacing them,”said Jalette.