By Maddie Hanna
The Concord Monitor
TILTON, N.H. — Prisoners have escaped twice from the Tilton police station, which lacks steel doors and modern security measures.
The town’s fire stations are also lacking. The Tilton fire station, which dates back to the 1800s, has inadequate safety features on the second floor, where three on-duty firefighters sleep. The Northfield station doesn’t have room for any on-duty firefighters — just engines and equipment. And neither station can respond quickly to fires in east Tilton, according to a study conducted last year
For years, the police and fire departments have sought to upgrade their buildings or move into new ones. Last year, Tilton voters approved a $2.5 million plan to move the police department into a new building, which the town then purchased.
But at this year’s town meeting, the town reversed course, voting to pull back what was left of the money and form a committee to evaluate options going forward. One that’s under consideration: a life safety building big enough to hold both departments.
A life safety building would cut energy costs and promote cooperation between the departments, and it could potentially be subsidized with grant money, according to proponents.
But there are complicating factors. A police department is less hindered by location than a fire department, which responds to emergency calls from its station, so choosing a site that works for both is necessary.
Who would make that choice, however, is another complication. Three fire commissioners oversee the fire department, which belongs to the Tilton-Northfield Fire District. Neither town’s selectmen are involved in the district’s budget; that goes before voters from both towns at the annual district meeting.
Significant reservations
The fire commissioners voted at their meeting Tuesday to put a member on the life safety committee, though one commissioner expressed significant reservations during the meeting about doing so.
“Is it your feeling that the committee will support a life safety complex, with or without us?” Kevin Waldron, the dissenting commissioner, asked Tilton Selectwoman Pat Consentino, who’s also a member of the life safety committee.
“We’re charged with pretty much what you’re charged, and it’s a puzzle, and our puzzles intertwine with each other, and somewhere on the line the person who puts the last part in is going to see the whole picture,” Consentino answered. “It’s going to take an awful lot of trust. Our intent is not to snowball anyone into a corner.”
But Katherine Dawson, chairwoman of the Tilton Board of Selectmen, said she thinks that’s what’s happening.
“We’re talking completely separate governments,” she said. “I almost feel that maybe the town of Tilton by their vote at this year’s town meeting is trying to bully the commissioners into doing something. I don’t think they’re respecting their authority.”
Last year, Tilton spent $1.5 million on an empty warehouse on Business Park Drive as part of the police station project. At town meeting this year, Tilton residents voted 103-3 to suspend the project and rescind the town’s authority to raise the remaining $910,000 that had been appropriated.
Dawson, who had questioned whether that proposal was legal, said the precedent troubled her.
“I’m going to tell the rest of the board: Don’t take your time, get the money, get it spent,” she said. “There will be those that say, ‘This is clear, the town has spoken,’ but what about the voters in 2008 that said build a police station?”
Pat Clark, one of the residents who proposed the town pull back money for the police station, said what came before voters in 2008 was a rushed plan.
“I was a big supporter of buying the building in 2008. It looked like a great location, it would be hunky dory, but what did I know?” Clark said. “It seemed to be a gift from God.”
“But if we had taken a little more time,” he said, “we would not have bought that building.”
A better process
Clark said the fire district hadn’t been involved in the plans for the building, which, though intended to house the Tilton police station, was big enough for the fire department to use, too. And the town invited the fire department to do so, Dawson said.
But it was ill-situated for the fire department. Tilton- Northfield fire Chief Steve Carrier, who said he likes the idea of a life safety building, said the department hadn’t been actively involved in the plans for the building that was purchased.
He recalled a number of times when plans were brought to him for consideration, but he said he never felt comfortable with the way those plans were brought together.
What’s happening now, he said, is a much better process.
In recent years, outside agencies have conducted studies of the Tilton Police Department and the Tilton-Northfield Fire Department. Both studies found the departments’ facilities deficient: The cramped quarters at Tilton’s police station on Main Street mean the prisoner booking area isn’t offset from the rest of the building, potentially endangering employees and anyone coming into the station.
At the police station, there’s also inadequate storage space, the 2006 study found. The detention cell doesn’t meet a number of state requirements. The station isn’t handicap accessible. Those are just a few examples; the study’s list of problems runs nearly three pages long.
A 2008 study of the fire department also outlined concerns, including the difficulty fire engines have exiting from the Center Street station in Tilton. That study recommended the department renovate its Park Street station in Northfield and relocate the Center Street station, something Carrier said he supports.
How and when those changes will happen is the question. The life safety committee is charged with finding a site for a building that could house both police and fire departments, with the police department moving in first and the potential of adding a fire department facility at a later date, according to the article passed at Tilton’s town meeting.
But the committee’s findings will be recommendations only. The decisions will happen at town meeting and the fire district meeting, if the district’s commissioners decide they like the committee’s plans.
“What I really do not want is our intent misconstrued,” Consentino said. “We want to get this right for Tilton. And for Northfield.”
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