The Concord city council will hold a public hearing Monday night before voting on whether to move forward with building a new police station.
The city bought the former Concord insurance building at 4 Bouton Street nearly two years ago for $4.1 million with the intention of siting a new police station there.
Designs show a large renovation of that building, expanding the space available to the police department and adding room for its social work team and the city prosecutor’s office, which currently rents office space.
The primary issues with the current station, which abuts City Hall on Green Street, are tied to its size and layout. It lacks sufficient and secure rooms to process and store evidence, garage locker rooms for female officers, secure paths for transporting detainees through the building and a real reception area.
A new headquarters could solve those problems and free the existing downtown facility for future rearrangement and updates to the City Hall campus.
The size of the new station grew during the design stage when it became clear that the mid-century office building would fit fewer department functions than originally expected.
If approved by the council on Monday, the new construction will roughly double the size of the former insurance building. The renovation would carry a $45.5 million price tag.
The city’s plan would split the debt into two bonds, meaning the project’s affect on tax bills wouldn’t be fully felt until a few years down the line.
Debt payments on the project’s full costs would peak in 2029, when they would add $0.85 onto the tax rate, which is equivalent to an additional $338 on the tax bill of a $400,000 home, according to the city’s estimates.
Key questions for councilors, in addition to whether or not to move forward, include whether to pare back any part of the design and whether to spend any reserve money on it.
There isn’t a set reserve fund for major building projects like this one, but the council could pull money from a number of savings pools, including its $15 million undesignated fund balance, or rainy day fund, to blunt the project’s impact on tax bills.