Garden City Police Headquarters Getting Facelift

Garden City's police headquarters is getting a facelift.

According to Commissioner Ernest Cipullo, renovations include a communications center with surrounding workstations to help bring the department up-to-date.

The total cost of the project is $500,000.

Resident Mort Yuter questioned the project's hefty price tag: "Five-hundred thousand dollars for a new desk?" he asked.

Mayor Robert Rothschild said the project also includes re-allocation of equipment and asbestos removal.

"If you've ever been down there it's not quite up-to-date," he said.

The project is part of the $2.5M bond issue trustees approved last year that also included roof work at fire headquarters, the communications tower behind police headquarters and the ongoing elevator installation at village hall.

"This is the last of the series of projects funded by the issue," Village Auditor Jim Olivo said.

Request For Proposals (RFPs) were sent to five architectural firms; the village received three responses, according to the mayor. At the March 4 board meeting, trustees approved a $43,500 consulting fee for Beatty, Harvey, Coco Architects, LLP.

"Of the two that were not chosen, one didn't have experience in this type of construction and the other was unfamiliar with the communications requirements for this project," the mayor said.

According to Department of Public Works director Robert Mangan, one bid was "very close" to the chosen while the other was not.

Trustee Nick Episcopia, aware that the village has worked with the architectural firm before, wondered if the village did their due diligence.

"Did we give the other villages a call to see if they're satisfied?" he asked.

Commissioner Cipullo said the department had people visit several other police departments where the firm has done work.

To further increase the department's efficiency, the commissioner noted that the mobile terminals currently installed in 15 police vehicles would also be upgraded.

"Everything that we do in headquarters now, just about everything, we'll be able to be done in the vehicle," Commissioner Cipullo said. "The police officer will have full access to our computer system and hopefully we'll keep them out on the road longer. They won't have to come into headquarters to do their reports."

"At this point, when officers have work to do they have to come back here to do it," the mayor added. "This will enable them hopefully to stay out in the field and do some of that work."

Trustee John Watras asked whether any of the architectural firms that responded to the RFP deemed the village hall building "useless."

"I'm being serious," he said. "At one point we were thinking we could move everything over to Saint Paul's. I hate to sound like a broken record here but it seems like we're putting lace curtains on a broken window."

Watras has been a vocal proponent of preserving the historic Saint Paul's School and is in favor of moving all village functions to the former boys school.

Deputy Mayor Don Brudie questioned the firm's $43,500 consulting fee and asked Olivo to take another look at the invoice.

"I'm having an awful problem with the numbers on this," he said. "What are all these other numbers? Are they going to be services provided or are they additional services that they offer that we can take if we so desire? I don't see how we can vote on this until it's clear."

After review, Olivo clarified the discrepancy.

"There is a maintenance contract," he explained. "That's the second part of the contract that you would pay for maintenance on software."

Brudie questioned whether the maintenance contract was required.

"It's something you elect to do but you would typically do, especially in the beginning of the project," Olivo said. "You will have maintenance calls on this type of software."

Several other trustees did not feel comfortable voting until the invoice was corrected; Village Counsel Gary Fishberg, however, said trustees were voting on the contract, not the invoice.

"We know the services that they're going to render through the contract, the numbers backing that up are not correct," the mayor said.

There was a sense of urgency in getting the contract approved because the police department's servers are "completely out of warranty," according to Olivo.

"We've already brought the new servers in but we want to make sure we do the upgrade before we do the installation," he said. "We are at some significant risk of having hardware failure in our server room, which we really don't want to take. We would like to get this done as expeditiously and as soon as possible only because we'd like to get started before they start the desk."

Trustees Dennis Donnelly and Watras still felt uneasy about the invoice.

"I have a problem with it being presented incorrectly," Donnelly said.

"I agree," said Watras.

Despite the hesitation, the board approved the contract with Beatty, Harvey, Coco Architects, LLP by a 4-3 vote; Trustee Laurence Quinn was the third dissenting vote.

Cipullo said renovations will begin "as soon as possible."