After a year long search, county council named Teviotdale as its preferred choice for a $7.5-million police station to serve the northern part of Wellington County
Police Services Board chairman Lynda White said in an interview on Monday the county will be buying an old and lately unused ball diamond from Minto for its OPP operations centre for North Wellington.
White said, “They have other ball parks. We’ve been doing a search for a long time and the planning department came up with this one.”
The project is in the five year capital forecast that has yet to be approved. Construction of the station is scheduled for 2012 and 2013. An initial provision of $500,000 was approved in the 2011 budget, with an additional $3 million in 2012 and $4 million in 2013.
The five year forecast has yet to receive final approval from county council, but is expected early in the new year.
White said the operations centre the county built recently in Aboyne in Centre Wellington was budgeted at $6 million and came in under that figure. But, she added, that did not include buying land (the Aboyne centre was built at Wellington Place, which is owned by the county).
Warden Chris White said the choice of Teviotdale was a natural because it is within 20 miles of all the major population centres in the northern part of the county.
He said the county considered a number of spots and there was one in Arthur that finished just out of the running.
Chris White noted one member of the search team pointed out it was a mere ten miles away from the Aboyne site, and Arthur is much farther away from other parts of the north the centre is to serve.
That operations centre will serve Mapleton, Minto, and Wellington North, and Lynda White said it would have 45 to 55 officers reporting to that site.
However, she said the OPP is a mobile service and if officers are in the station all the time they are not doing their work properly. They need to be on the street.
She added most centres in Wellington County are expected to continue their storefront OPP offices. She said there will be one in Palmerston and Harriston, while the one in Clifford was closed because it was not used.
The Mount Forest OPP station is owned and operated by the province and it will remain. Grey County OPP officers also work out of that station with Wellington OPP officers.
All OPP officers will shift to Teviotdale when it opens.
The province has already announced it will place a forensic operations centre in Mount Forest.
Lynda White added the operations centre in Palmerston will be closed. It was not designed for a police operations centre and she said it has “deficiencies.”
She added the new Teviotdale centre will look a lot like the ones opened in Rockwood and Aboyne in the past six years.
She added since the county built those buildings, others around Ontario want to copy the type of buildings Wellington has erected.
Lynda White said the building the county erects in Teviotdale will always be a county building.
She said the county is extremely happy with the OPP service it is receiving, since it has access to province-wide experience in all types of crime fighting initiatives, equipment and skilled people.
Warden Chris White said geographically, the Teviotdale site made the most sense, and he also noted land there was cheaper than the cost of land at a possible site in Arthur. He said the cost of the ball park in Teviotdale was about $180,000 for six acres.
He said the county looked at many sites, but the closer the scrutiny, the faster some of those “fell off” the list. He added Palmerston is not really losing a police station. “It’s just down the street now,” he said.
Lynda White said she hopes the new police station in Teviotdale will be opened in late 2014.
The proposed funding for the project includes tax levy amounts of $750,000 in 2012 and $1.75 million in 2013, debenture financing of $750,000 in 2012 and $1.25 million in 2013, and a contribution from the county property reserve of $1.5 million in 2012 and $1 million in 2013.
