LAURA JAMESON/THE EXPRESS Plans to construct a building to house the Lock Haven City Police Department on a portion of the West Church Street parking lot were stopped Monday night, after council failed to pass a vote to accept bids for the project.

LOCK HAVEN — Once again, the Lock Haven City Police Department is left to wonder when it may receive upgraded facilities.

At a special meeting Monday night, a motion to accept bids for the long-awaited police building project failed in a 3-4 vote.

Various iterations of council since at least 2018 have been discussing whether or not to make improvements to its aging city hall — which, according to a feasibility study in 2021, has inadequate space for LHPD — or to build a new structure.

Through direction of council in 2023, city staff worked to secure grant funding — including a $1 million USDA grant and $500,000 Local Share Act (LSA) grant for the project — and draft plans with Buchart Horn Architects for a new police building. It also borrowed about $2.1 million in a 2021A Note for the new structure.

That plan has now been stopped, however, with last night’s decision by council to instead look again into whether or not it can upgrade City Hall, located at 20 E. Church St., Lock Haven.

Voting in favor of accepting the bids were council members Barb Masorti, Rick Conklin and Tami Brannan. Voting against accepting the bids were Mayor Joel Long and council members Jeff Brinker, Heather Alexander and Micah Clausen.

Before the vote, Clausen — who attended a meeting with Code Inspection, Inc. and Buchart Horn Architects last Thursday along with Long and Masorti — explained the reason behind his decision.

“This wasn’t an easy decision. I love our police, I support our police. This isn’t a vote to do nothing. I want to turn this building into everything they need,” Clausen said.

Following the vote, The Express contacted Chief Matthew Rickard about the decision and what this means for the department, which has been waiting for either upgraded facilities or a new building for roughly a decade.

Rickard said the decision by council was a disappointing one, however he respects its wishes and will work with city staff to ensure the improvement process is successful.

“The police building project is something that city staff have worked very diligently on for quite some time. It is a personal disappointment to see that it will not move forward… the department has been waiting for and needing improvements for a very long time. The officers share in this disappointment,” Rickard said.

However, he said he looks forward to working with city staff to outline improvements of current City Hall to benefit his officers.

“If the wish of council is to make improvements to City Hall, then city staff will again give it our best efforts to see the project through,” he said.

Rickard said he is unsure how this may affect recruitment and retention of its complement of officers.

“How recruiting will be affected will be challenging to determine. Clearly a new facility would attract candidates, but with the new direction of remodeling city hall, we will just have to wait and see how things turn out,” he said.

Once plans are solidified, Rickard told The Express he’d be better able to comment on how it would affect these factors.

After the vote, Masorti asked City Planner/Interim Manager Abbey Roberts how the city would return the $1 million in grant funding and $500,000 in LSA grant funding.

Roberts said she is unsure what the process was, but said she’d contact the proper channels to figure out how it is done.

She emphasized, however, that once the money is returned the city cannot get it back.

“When I say that we’re not using this money, that is it. I respect this decision, but please know when we turn it back, we turn it back. We can’t change that,” she said.

She further requested council’s building committee — consisting of Long, Masorti and Alexander — continue to meet with staff to ensure a quick turnaround for planning regarding rehabilitating City Hall.

“I would like to continue working with the building committee and setting a meeting with Buchart Horn to work on designs,” she said.

COUNCIL’S DISCUSSIONS

Council’s discussion surrounding the move was very brief Monday night, with Brinker asking those on the building committee and those who attended what their thoughts were following Thursday’s meeting with representatives from Buchart Horn, Code Inspection, Inc. and city staff.

Masorti said she felt they were presented with a thorough overview of where discussions and plans started and where the city is now.

“I think they made things clear about what we need to do here in this building,” she said. “There’s a lot of unknowns when you start to tear up a whole building.”

She added the representatives from Buchart Horn have been working with the city for roughly five years and have been able to make it clear what options there were.

“There wasn’t really anything new. I felt like they gave us fair information and were very reasonable,” she said.

Clausen said the committee asked a lot of questions and agreed Buchart Horn and Code Inspection, Inc. were reasonable. He noted he came up with one question which he asked Roberts and Cyndi Walker, building code official, after the meeting.

He said it was noted the ADA accessibility required in the shower spaces for the police station could be considered unnecessary. He asked if an exemption could be filed regarding that particular ADA compliance.

He said the response from Code Inspection, Inc. was “we’d have to get an exemption but we could. There are too many variables without having a conceptualized plan to answer questions about what and what not could be allowed.”

Clausen acknowledged it was a guarantee but it was worth looking into, and could reduce the square footage required for that particular part of the project.

Long said the meeting confirmed to him that rehabilitating City Hall could happen and that some hurdles he thought were in place weren’t as big as he thought.

“It was nice to be able to talk to them and ask them directly what we can and can’t do,” he said. “I was satisfied with the meeting, I felt good about it.”

Council had previously requested information from Code Inspection, Inc. regarding how much city hall could be rehabbed piece by piece, before it would kick in a requirement to overhaul the entire building.

That information was shared with council in a packet from Roberts.

At its regular meeting last week, Walker also touched on this information.

At the time, she said Code Inspection, Inc. told her the city would need to completely isolate the police department and the rest of City Hall from each other.

“If you can completely isolate the police facility and the office facilities on the second floor. Then you could deal with them individually. But they have to be completely isolated,” she said.

That means it would involve separate HVAC systems, plumbing and electric among other items.

It was recommended by W. Scott Loercher, of Buchart Horn, the city takes a phased approach to ensure minimal disruptions.

Loercher also noted there isn’t a fixed percentage of the building that would be renovated, which would kick in requirements to completely re-do the entire facility.

“If the City decides to remain in City Hall, the most practical approach would be a phased police renovation focused first on life safety, security and accessibility. That would include creating an accessible police entrance and route, renovating compliant police toilet and locker facilities, addressing door hardware and level change barriers and then phasing the remaining police support spaces and MEP upgrades while temporarily relocating only the functions directly affected in each phase,” Loercher said in an email to city staff. “This approach would help keep operations running, limit disruption and allow the City to apply the required accessibility improvements at each phase.”

Frank Tourscher, of Code Inspection, Inc., told staff he agreed with this assessment.

At this time, there is no set plan for what the renovations may look like, what funding sources the city will have outside of the 2021A Borrowing note and a timeline for completion.