The Elkhart Common Council appropriated $5.2 million dollars Monday night for a new police headquarters and 911 communications center.
The plan also includes a separate training and storage facility. In total, the project is estimated to cost $42 million.
At the council meeting Monday, Elkhart Police Chief Kris Seymore said the department’s current facility — built in 1974 — is on its “last legs.”
“We’re going to keep putting bad money into that to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “I mean, it’s literally being held together day by day by our custodial staff.”
Seymore said it takes $5,000 to $7,000 a month to maintain the building’s HVAC system, and they recently had to resurface the detention garage to avoid it becoming a liability to the city.
The current police headquarters was also built to house only 85 officers. Seymore said staff has doubled since then, and they’re now storing evidence in five different locations.
“It’s just a matter of growth, and storage concerns and technology concerns,” he said.
Of the $5.2 million appropriated Monday night, $4.2 million will go to design and other professional services for the project, and $1 million will go to land acquisition.
The city plans to use property owned by the board of public works for the training and storage facility. In a March 3 finance committee meeting, city engineer Tory Irwin said the site is known as the north well field, located between County Road 4 and the Indiana Toll Road.
The city is considering a downtown location for police headquarters and the 911 center, but hasn’t released specific sites yet in an effort to not drive up the cost.
“Having the police department be either on the far north side or the far south side of the city gives the perception that the other side isn’t important,” Seymore said at the March 3 meeting. “It also makes us less efficient in how we respond — if we’re coming from the far north side of town, or we have something that’s far south, that increases our response times.”
The appropriation passed 6 to 2, with council members David Henke and Megan Baughman voting against it.
“A building doesn’t make the service — it’s the people on the streets that make the service,” Henke said Monday. “It’s actually the people in their homes going to work every day that provide the money. And even though there is a service offered, their money is not to be wasted.”
Councilman Brian Thomas was absent at Monday’s meeting.
The Elkhart Police Department is a financial supporter of WVPE.
Contact Gemma at gdicarlo@wvpe.org or follow her on Twitter at @gemma_dicarlo.
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