WINSLOW — Chief Jeffrey Fenlason said his police force is making the best of a tough situation.
Two months ago, the department moved out of its home of 30 years and into temporary quarters upstairs in the fire station. The space is one-fifth the size of the original police station, but there was a good reason for the change: An addition is being added to he old space, which will double the floorplan.
Additional Photos
In the meantime, however, the force is in limbo. On Aug. 3, the code enforcement officer and the state issued stop-work orders on the renovation project because the construction manager hadn’t sought a permit from the fire marshal’s office. More than a month later, the project remains idle while the town, construction manager and fire marshal hash out details on unforeseen code requirements, which could raise the cost of the project by nearly $200,000. A final cost and date of completion are unknown.
“There are no regrets,” Fenlason said about moving to the temporary quarters. “We’re just trying to keep morale up among the guys.
“It’s difficult working conditions here. Everyone has done what they could — the fire department has been very cooperative — it’s just hard to run a police station like this.”
The temporary station is in the northwest corner of the fire station in an area known as Back Hall — a gathering space periodically used by community groups and municipal departments.
The police station — a mix of existing offices and unfinished drywall partitions — occupies about 650 square feet of the hall. There are four offices and a reception area for a force of nine full-time officers, eight reserve officers and one dispatcher. About five people work at the station at any given time.
“It’s cramped. It’s tough,” Officer Brandon Lund said of the temporary space.
At the old station, for instance, there was a room set aside for processing prisoners where they could be secured by handcuffs to a wall, Lund said. In the temporary space, however, a chair next to a computer fills the role of booking room.
Fenlason said there haven’t been any incidents with the reduced security measures, but that’s partly because of a temporary shift in booking protocol.
“If we know that someone is giving us a hard time, we’ll take them to Waterville or straight down to the jail,” he said. “We only book cooperative people here.”
To fit in the temporary space, the station is using fewer computers and phones. For instance, the department used to have about a dozen phones. Now it has three. Fenlason said the reduction hasn’t created any communication bottlenecks, but it is inconvenient for employees to share phones and computers.
About 20 feet from the temporary station, in a separate room, are sleeping quarters for six firefighters. Capt. Karl Roy, of the fire department, said the thin walls don’t block out the sounds of any angry detainees during the night, but it has always been difficult to sleep at the station.
“You get to doze, but you don’t get to sleep,” he said. “It’s not because of the police department. It has more to do with the number of calls we receive.”
Roy said sharing the space with police has been a good thing.
“I like the camaraderie,” he said. “Almost every night we’ll walk over and see who’s working. I think it’s been great for relations between the departments.”
Fire Chief David LaFountain temporarily gave up his office for the police station. He said the two departments have always been cooperative, but he looks forward to a day when everyone is back in their own spaces, whenever that might be.
“Like in life, the biggest problem is often the unknown,” he said. “In this case, we don’t know the endpoint. We don’t know if the council is going to scrap the project or restart the project. We don’t know if the starting date will happen before winter sets in.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
