Newton commissioners have yet to make decision on new police, court building

The Newton Police Department’s hope for a new headquarters to replace its aging facility is one step closer to reality.

WDM Architects presented renderings of the proposed facility to Newton city commissioners this week, who still have not given final approval to the project.

Newton Police Chief Eric Murphy is optimistic that commissioners will approve spending on the building, which would be built across the railroad tracks from Newton’s Amtrak station.

“The officers need a good working environment to be in,” he said. “If we’re able to provide that, I think our officers are going to be happier and will be a better service to the community.”

City commissioners expressed concern this week that “property tax lid” legislation passed last year in Topeka could affect their ability to construct the police station.

“It is going to be a challenge, especially if the current legislation’s proposal to move forward with this property tax lid proposal happens this year,” said commissioner Barth Hague. “It’s going to put us, as well as all other city and county governments in Kansas, in a very difficult position to do things like this.”

Need for a new building

The Newton Police Department shares a building with the Harvey County Sheriff’s Department and Harvey County’s emergency dispatch.

It was built in the late 1960s, and police needs in 2016 are much different than they were 50 years ago, Murphy said.

“At that point, computers were basically nonexistent,” Murphy said. “The building isn’t equipped to handle some of the technologies out there today.”

The department has been advocating for new facilities since 2010, according to city officials.

Upgrading the department’s current facilities would cost about $3 million, said Newton Mayor Glen Davis, “for a building we’re still going to have to do something with in five years.”

The city has purchased the land for the proposed building, which would house the Police Department and Newton’s municipal court, for $475,000.

The approximately 39,000-square-foot building was designed to complement the Amtrak depot’s Shakespearean architectural style, city officials said.

City staff said this week that they wanted to keep the project under $8 million total; however, that is not yet a firm number, Hague said.

The problem: Commissioners have not yet figured out how they are going to fund the building.

“We are at a point where we are about 70 percent of the way there, in terms of a finalized overall plan,” Hague said.

How to fund it

Davis, the mayor, said the city could try a few different things to raise money: It could implement a sales tax or a mill levy increase.

He said he also has a plan that could partially fund the building by using existing assets, but he declined to go into detail.

The city’s plans might be subject to the property tax lid legislation, which says city and county governments must hold a public vote if they want to raise spending by more than an adjusted Consumer Price Index rate to be set by the state of Kansas.

Davis said “it’s like walking a tightrope” trying to work with Newton residents who support the new police station and with those who don’t.

“One side is saying, ‘Yeah, we need to spend the money,’ and then you have the side where people are living on fixed incomes, and they don’t want any changes whatsoever,” he said.

“We want to make both factions happy with what we’re doing, but we need to do what’s right for the citizens in the long run.”

In the meantime

The Newton Police Department is in “a holding pattern” until the City Commission makes its decision, Murphy said.

Until then, though, Murphy said the department has made some morale-boosting improvements to its current headquarters.

“We’ve painted some walls and had the carpets cleaned,” he said. “They’re still old and they’re still deteriorated and need to be replaced, but we’ve cleaned them. We’ve also replaced several sets of office chairs.”

Davis said Newton police officers are making the best of their current facilities, “but the building’s falling apart.”

“Newton really needs this police station,” he said. “It’s time.”

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Newton commissioners have yet to make decision on new police, court building."