By KARIN CROMPTON
Day Staff Writer, Lyme/Old Lyme
Published on 11/30/2004
East Lyme —Nearly four months after a plan for a public safety complex died during a bitterly debated Board of Finance meeting, a new committee is making progress in its efforts to identify a parcel and recommend a design for the building.
The committee, appointed by the Board of Selectmen, is designed to avoid a similar scenario in which residents and town officials felt left out of the discussion. Composed of 10 voting members and six ex-officio participants, it includes representatives from the selectmen and finance boards, the fire marshal, a resident state trooper and an East Lyme police officer.
Meeting weekly since the beginning of October, the committee has selected from a list of about 25 properties and identified four locations that appear most promising: property behind the high school; the Drabik property, just up the road from the high school on Route 161; property by Exit 74 of Interstate 95, near a golf driving range; and the Masonic Temple and its land on Society Road.
The list is nowhere near final, but the committee decided last week to ask the Board of Selectmen whether those properties are available. Chairman Paul Renshaw, a police officer and union president, said the committee hopes for an answer by the end of the year so it can move on to more detailed analyses of properties.
“We want to draw the line at some point and say there's just nothing else to consider,” Renshaw said. “We want to get the word out again that if anyone has ideas or if any property owners may be interested in selling some property, to come to a meeting or send us a letter.”
The earlier plan called for the town to team with the National Guard to build a public safety complex on the grounds of Camp Rell. Residents and finance board members who voted against the proposal criticized its lack of details – there were no drawings and vague cost estimates – and said that First Selectman Wayne Fraser acted mostly on his own, snubbing key players such as the police.
“We weren't really involved, there weren't any other options being explored, and it kind of focused on one particular way of doing it and one location,” said Renshaw. “I would say everyone is happy that the process is what it is this go-around.”
The committee was also asked to make a recommendation on whether to use the Millstone Discovery Center building on Main Street in Niantic as a temporary building for the police department. The committee voted in favor, stressing that the use is short-term only.
Fraser has attended just one meeting, and said that on Tuesdays there are other meetings he must attend.
“My role as CEO of the town is to help them answer questions that they'll ask, and when its work is through the process of approving something, then to go and build whatever the voters have supported to build,” Fraser said. “I'm the police chief and the head of public safety, so this is a facility I will definitely support. It is a facility my team needs to perform its duties today and in the future.”
The committee will tour police department and public safety buildings in other towns. On Dec. 7, the committee will tour the Stonington police station. It is also eyeing the Clinton station.
Renshaw said Stonington and Clinton interest the committee because they are shoreline towns similar in size to East Lyme, with similar manpower and square miles of town to cover.
However, the two towns' buildings house only their police departments and dispatch center. Renshaw said the committee is also thinking of touring the Farmington public safety complex, a facility that is about a year old and is similar in size to what East Lyme would need.
Some committee members criticized Fraser at a meeting in mid-November for burdening the committee with extra duties by suggesting that it recommend designs for how to use the Dominion building after the police department moved out.
Renshaw said there is no timeline for the committee to complete its charge, but that everyone understands it is as soon as possible. Mostly, he said, everyone involved is satisfied with its progress and communication style.
“I think in general everyone's happy that there's a process in place that opens the discussion and is taking into consideration all the possibilities,” he said.