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By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
7-22-2010 For the fourth year in a row, the Inyo County Grand Jury has suggested that the Bishop Police Department needs larger facilities. While minor changes are being made within the small building on the corner of Warren and West Line streets, a true fix, it has been reported, will require plenty of capital which will be hard to come by in these unprecedented financial times.
Last year, following the Grand Jury’s report, the City of Bishop and BPD Chief Kathleen Sheehan explored the possibility of moving into the former Verizon building on the south end of town. However, at that time Verizon never offered a solid price or plan. It was reported that Verizon wanted to split the property to allow access to the communication tower located there. City Administrator Rick Pucci said this week that the city has not been in contact with Verizon since then, but the city is trying to re-connect.
At the Bishop City Council retreat on July 6, the council directed Pucci and staff to recontact Verizon to gather more information and a current sales price, if Verizon is even interested anymore. Pucci said Wednesday he currently has calls into Verizon, but there has been no response.
“We’re making every effort possible to first identify the needs (at the BPD facility),” Pucci said, “then move forward from there.”
Pucci said while he and staff are following the progress of Verizon, the communications provider has not responded back.
Pucci said the consensus of the Grand Jury, and council members reportedly agree, is that the space is simply too small at current headquarters to conduct police business while maintaining certain measures of privacy, confidentiality and safety.
Bruce Dishion, councilmember and former police chief, said the idea of a new place for the BPD “has always been on the table, and we’ll never quit looking.” Dishion said if the Grand Jury would be willing to provide the capital, the city would happily accept it.
Dishion added that part of the plan has been to move the facility to make more room for the Bishop Fire Department, next door to the BPD. “They need to expand, too,” he said.
Some are making the most of the small space and being heralded as an example of how to work in small spaces. Now-retired BDP Reserve Officer Richard Kizer was commended by the Grand Jury for his “exemplary procedures and paperwork for evidence storage and tracking in a very small area. Other agencies in the state have adopted his procedures.”
While minor modifications are being made within the facility, the solution, Pucci said, is to either rebuild a new building, or find a replacement building. But any option is going to cost a lot of money.
The Verizon location on Lagoon Street is ideal, Sheehan said, as it is a large space with ample parking and accessibility. Councilmember Laura Smith said the Cottonwood Plaza buildings on Main Street were considered, but she said the amount of improvements needed to the buildings did not make the option feasible.
Funding will be the biggest challenge for expanding into a new building.
Sheehan said that the number of grants currently available is unprecedented, but the amount of these grants is very small.
Mayor Jeff Griffiths said he and the council agrees that a bigger building would be better, but funding will be difficult.
Griffiths added that securing funding has been difficult the last several years, especially for such a large project, and it will probably be several more years before money would be available.
“We’re open to creative ways to partner with other organizations” to secure funding, Griffiths added.
Sheehan said, “What it boils down to is, if we can do this without spending all the public funds on a building, then we would love to see it happen.”
The matter will be on the agenda of the next council meeting on July 26.
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