No one credibly disputes the unsafe, expensive, inefficient state of decay the current RCMP detachment exists in. But are we getting the right building for this town's crime profile and taxpayer affordability? In a two-part series The Citizen examines what we are getting for our $40 million.
There are clear public concerns about the cost of the proposed new building. The price tag to build the thing is estimated to be about $25 million, with another $15 million pinned to the project in land purchase and other incidentals.
The discussions in the public were funneled to the table of city council. Some councillors wondered out loud if that parcel of land (the west side of Victoria Street between 4th Ave. and 5th Ave.) wouldn't be prime real estate to be sold off at a higher rate to the private sector. The retort from staff was decisive. You'd think so, but the fact is no developer wanted the land and its location has tactical advantages for the police.
The other questions are not so easily answered. Of the four councillors (Don Bassermann, Cameron Stoltz, Brian Skakun and Dave Wilbur) who sat on the oversight committee that managed the final stages of the building's design, two were outright hostile to the project. Skakun said it was too expensive and refused to endorse the plan. Wilbur said he reluctantly would accept the plan but had concerns.
Wilbur told The Citizen his concerns over cost were mostly about accountability. He understood the price of construction these days but wanted to know why certain features had to be included or had to be built a certain way. When The Citizen asked for some of these same answers, the response was not necessarily inappropriate, but was frustrating.
"There will not be floor plan materials available due to issues around security," said City Hall spokesman Mike Davis. Wilbur said he was told as much when he asked certain questions.
One downtown merchant, unnamed here, put the concern to The Citizen thusly: "Why do we need the Mercedes Benz of police buildings when a Chevy Malibu is pretty good too but much less costly? Why do we need all the luxuries?"
This merchant was citing the drawings issued by City Hall earlier in the process that showed what the building would look like. Officials have since explained that these drawings were just conceptual ideas; the images in no way show what would actually be there.
Mayor Dan Rogers coughed over the suggestion of the new building having Mercedes Benz qualities to it. With all the active priorities on the city's wish list, he said, it was laughable that anyone would think extraneous spending was going on in a building he hoped most Prince George residents would never have the misfortune of seeing the guts of.
He congratulated the four council members and city staff who worked with the RCMP design team to whittle away $6 million in added features - an underground parkade and an Emergency Operations Centre (the removal of the EOC allowed for fenced surface parking for police vehicles) - but even these were not frills.
"This isn't an office building where people just sit at their computers," Rogers said. "This is a lab; this is an armory; this is a prison; this is where critical evidence storage and analysis happens in major cases affecting mass public safety and for court purposes it has to be pristine; this is where highly-sophisticated and delicate investigations are based, and complex data is stored and analyzed. People must be dealt with in this building who are combative. People want to do harm to the members who work in this building, or get away with crimes they've done that are being investigated in there.
"Also, the public needs to come and do business here and be safe and have their needs met, be that reporting a crime or getting information, or having a criminal record check done so they can volunteer for their school or community group. The members who work there have their human resources needs to be met as well, so that has to be there.
"This building is a critical building," Rogers said. "The building itself is a tool. There are national standards that have been established for a lot of this, and we must adhere to that, and that is what has been studied and put into this design."
Rogers had an analogy of his own. Some buildings are simple warehouses, but some buildings have specialized functions. He believed the public was already clear on which kind of building this was.
"This is not a want; this is a need," he said.
Watch The Citizen in the days ahead for the second part of this series.
