The three-year-old issue of moving the Police Department downtown is still pushing the wrong buttons for some residents of the Bingen-White Salmon, and greater surrounding areas.
About a dozen individuals expressed uncertainty Tuesday regarding the proposed move of the Bingen-White Salmon Police Department to downtown White Salmon. By the end of the discussion, White Salmon Mayor David Poucher said he may consider a different location if it was comparable to costs currently incurred by the police department residing in the Park Center.
Poucher, City Administrator Patrick Munyan, and City Council member Tao Berman, as well as Police Chief Tracy Wyckoff and Sergeant Mike Hepner, heard comments and suggestions from locals wanting the city to reconsider the police department move.
The meeting was spearheaded by real estate owner Steve Curley, who circulated a petition of 70 signatures, of which 14 were local business owners. About 11 people attended the discussion. A handful were business owners with shops downtown. Curley suggested to city officials that the police department consider moving to the Roberson & Gibbs Professional Building off E Jewett Boulevard.
Poucher told attendees that the city had considered the Roberson building, but had ruled it out due to the location costing more than the city-owned building downtown. Additional costs would include installing a separate line of secure high speed internet and a higher internet bill, which Poucher said would cost $1,000 a month for the utility (citing an estimate by Radcomp Technologies).
“We’re trying to save dollars, and right off the bat that puts us up at $24,000 more from where we are,” Poucher said referring to moving the police station to the Roberson building.
The owner of the Roberson & Gibbs Professional Building, James Herman, attended the meeting, and noted that he was open to negotiating space and rent if the city was interested in moving the police department there.
When other locations were suggested, Wyckoff clarified that a building needed to meet specific requirements in order to house a police department. “You just can’t put a police department into an-other building with another business because everything has to be separate,” Wyckoff explained.
“City Hall cannot have access to our systems, our building, our reports, anything that we do, our computers, [it] has to be totally separate and secluded from everybody else having access to it,” said Wyckoff. “You can’t just put us in another building side-by-side, it has to be physically separated.” Wyckoff also noted that the Roberson building would need to be secured before the police department could move in, which would cost the city an undetermined amount.
When asked if the police department would move to the City Hall building on the corner of Jewett and Main, Munyan explained that the costs were too high. “We actually went out to bid to do that, that was the original plan and we don’t have $600,000 to do it,” Munyan explained.
“If we had the money to build another police department we would do that, but we don’t have the money,” Munyan explained. Poucher estimated that the police department may only reside downtown for a few years, while the city continues to seek developing another building for the department.
Curley pressed the city for an economic impact study to determine if the police department’s move would economically harm local businesses. Poucher panned the idea, explaining that the City of White Salmon did not have over $100,000 to spend on an economic impact survey.
White Salmon and B-WSPD confirmed that the move downtown would not mean a designated parking spot for police vehicles. Poucher then explained that police vehicles may park downtown, like any other patron, but that a designated police parking spot on Jewett Boulevard was not in the cards.
“We’re not taking a parking spot, period,” said Wyckoff when the issue of parking was brought up. “We’ll walk. It’s an inconvenience for us, but we’ll do it.”
The possibility of locating to Bingen was nixed by Wyckoff, who stated that the police department couldn’t be in a city it isn’t owned by. Even though the Police Department is titled as Bingen-White Salmon PD, Bingen has no ownership of the department. “We’re the White Salmon Police Department. We have to be inside of the city limits of White Salmon,” said Poucher.
A few individuals reiterated the desire for another business downtown to generate revenue, instead of the police department. Munyan pointed out that having another business downtown would possibly create more stress on parking.
When asked if the issue could be put to a vote among city council members, Munyan explained that since the police department was a city-owned entity the mayor could make the decision without council approval.
Poucher made a final statement on the matter, saying “If there is a proposal that we can get out there, that’s a push, I’m open to it.”
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