BRATTLEBORO — Town Meeting Members will be asked to vote on a question that asks if they are willing to spend $4.5 million on relocating the police station to Black Mountain Road. The warning does not indicate that vote will, in fact, authorize the spending of about $13 million above the $5 million loan already taken out.
The actual loan, which will include work on the West Brattleboro Fire Station, is in fact anticipated to be $7.76 million. Interest on the loan, for a 20-year option, is an additional $2.74 million. (Interest on a 30-year bond is $4.494 million.)
Not calculated into the final figure: the cost of having the station on the far north end of town. Nearly all the police business and activity occurs in the central, south, and west end of town. Not surprising - there is almost no residential population at all in the north end.
Consequent to that location, it is therefore necessary for every town vehicle that either originates from or is destined to the police station (every cop on duty, every administrator going to or coming from a meeting from there, every Department of Public Works trip, etc.) is traveling four extra miles and 10 minutes every round trip. Take out a pencil and paper.
An average town employee costs $75,000 per year, between pay and benefits. Using the normal 40-hour work week, that's 2,000 hours per year, or about $37.50 per hour. Ten minutes is $6.16.
A total of 50 trips a day might be conservative, but I'll use that: 50 x $6.16 = $330 per day just in traveling time. Multiply times 365 days a year, and we will spend $120,000 in travel time to have our police station on Black Mountain Road. Per year.
Now calculate the cost of the car. I'll take the simpler route for that. Four miles' round trip is 200 miles per day in town vehicles. Of course, some of those trips are taken in private vehicles. On the other hand, some are DPW dump trucks with sand and plows.
So: 200 miles/day = 73,000 miles/year. Thus, we add about three quarters of the cost of a new car every year. Figure that to be, conservatively, $23,000. Adding labor to materials (the car) without anything else there might be, though that should be most of it, we have at least $143,000 per year of location cost. Times 20 years: $2.86 million.
I know there seems to be a little fudging here. For instance, it can be argued that additional time and labor does not increase benefits. True. But 10 minutes per trip for 50 trips is 500 minutes. That's the equivalent of an eight-hour day.
* * *
What happens at first is that overtime starts creeping up. (Or the quality of police protection goes down.) The next year, the police chief is asserting that it is practical if not necessary to hire another patrol officer and eliminate the overtime. That clearly makes sense. So we hire another officer.
Now, the benefits are there, too. And the $60,000 training fee if the hire is coming from the Vermont Police Academy, which most do.
The result: $7.76 million, principal; $2.74 million, interest; $2.86 million, location cost. Total cost to complete the project: $13.36 million for the first 20 years.
Adding this much ($10.5 million) bonded debt (the rest of the $13.3 million will be slipped into the operating budget) will adversely impact our bond rating and probably result in yet-higher interest rates on future bonds, such as the $1 million we'll need to replace our 25-year-old ladder truck or replace an old bridge. So throw a few hundred thousand more dollars into the pot to cover indirect costs.
If the Town Meeting Members vote no at the Special Town Meeting, the Selectboard will return in three or four months with a more reasonable and affordable project to consider. In the meantime, our police are not suffering injuries in their own building, and the level of public safety seems quite satisfactory.
True enough that it is a dicey situation getting a prisoner down the necessary stairs to the cell in the basement. But we've been managing this for the last 60 years anyway.
However, these risks hardly compare to the normal danger in responding to calls in the field that involve, or could potentially involve, weapons and other severe violence.
In short, we'll survive until we can get the right project on the table.