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Showing its age

Lakewood considers future of police facility

LAKEWOOD -- Should the existing police headquarters be renovated, or is it better to build a new facility elsewhere?

At Monday’s meeting of the Village Board at 20 W. Summit St. one of the main topics of discussion was how to address the issues facing the aging police department building.

Trustees Ellen Barnes and Benjamin J. Troche explained they received a working copy of a Police Department Feasibility Study. Still, they reminded everyone that it is a working copy and will likely change before they receive a final revision.

Troche explained the trustees have received a working copy of the Lakewood-Busti Police Department Facilities Conditions Assessment Report from LaBella. However, that copy would change -- more likely than not -- multiple times before a final draft was submitted.

"The department is housed in a station that was not designed for law enforcement; nor has it been updated for a number of years," Troche said. "There are multiple governmental agencies which the Lakewood-Busti Police Department has to adhere to … for the safety of visitors, prisoners, officers, and others."

"The second part of the contract will be the feasibility study. This tells us what’s wrong; the feasibility study will tell us, for example, the prisoner cell does not meet (Department of Criminal Justice) standards; this is what you have to do within the building to fix that problem," he said. "For a number of years, Chief (Matthew) Bentley reported that while we get audits every year from these different agencies, they have given us exemptions -- those exemptions are becoming increasingly harder to get because standards have changed so many years ago and we haven’t shown any progress."

The trustees unanimously voted to accept the more than 140-page report and to make it available online on the village’s webpage at www.lakewoodny.gov for public review.

In other business, staff members from the Village Treasurer and Clerk's Office have reported a favorable outcome by successfully staying under budget for payments to the New York State Public Servants' pension funds.

The village allocated $99,50 for the state Employee Retirement System in its budget. However, actual expenditure for this fiscal year will be $89,393, resulting in taxpayer saving of about $16,137.

Conversely, funding for pensions, specifically for police officers, exceeded the budgeted amount by about $13,111. The Village planned to spend about $406,310, but the actual bill due totals $419,421. Nonetheless, the Village remains financially sound -- in the green-- specifically for these two items.