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http://thenewsdispatch.com/articles/2010/0...49554945451.txt

Upgrade scrapped for police station

Matt Field/The News-Dispatch The Michigan City Police Department., 102 W. Second St.
Council votes not to apply for grant for modernization
By Matt Field
Staff Writer
Published: Friday, April 9, 2010 4:15 AM CDT
MICHIGAN CITY — When Michigan City applies for a federal stimulus grant today, it won’t be asking for money to make the police station more energy-efficient.

The city council voted Tuesday to scrap the part of a resolution authorizing the city to apply for grant money to install new windows and the insulation at the station. The city will still apply for funds to install about 250 energy-efficient street lights.

Councilman Rich Murphy said he wants the city to build a new police station in a different location. While making the ’60s-era building more energy-efficient would realize benefits in the long-term, Murphy thinks it would be wasteful to upgrade a building only to move out a few years later. He hopes a new station can be built by then.

“Too many times we just Band-Aid things here, ‘oh now we’ve got five more years to address what’s holding Michigan City back,’” he said. “What’s holding us back is we’re not leveraging Lake Michigan.”

The original resolution called for the city to apply for $190,000 in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant money for work on the police station. Those are stimulus funds, said Charlie Cate, the city’s maintenance superintendent who is the project coordinator for the grant. The city will still ask for $240,000 to install the street lights, he said.

Even though the police station upgrades would have been paid for with federal money, the Murphy said the council has the responsibility not to waste it.

“If every community just used them without concern about a return on investment I think we’d be in a bad place,” he said.

In an interview, Police Chief Ben Neitzel agreed that his department needs a new station, but did not say whether it needed to be in a new location.

Neitzel said he’s not disappointed that the council voted to scrap the application to upgrade his aging facilities, but he wants the new station.

“Absence of any movement of a direction on a new building, we were looking at Plan B, and saying, ‘what do we have to do to make this building work for the X number of years,’” Neitzel said.

Mayor Chuck Oberlie said building a new station is a priority but that the city can’t afford to do so now. He said less money is in the riverboat funds that the city could use for development.

Oberlie also stressed the importance of merging city facilities such as the police station and city hall. He hopes that the person hired to fill the newly created facilities manager can look into such consolidations.