BRATTLEBORO-Plans to create a downtown restroom/police sub-station in the town-owned Brattleboro Transportation Center on Flat Street will move forward now that the Selectboard has voted 3-2 to do so.
At the board's July 8 meeting, board members Elizabeth McLoughlin, Amanda Ellis-Thurber, and Peter Case voted to award the contract to All Seasons Construction of Springfield. Members Isaac Evans-Frantz and Oscar Heller voted against awarding the contract.
The project, aimed to keep police eyes on the street where rising public safety concerns are reported, has been in the works on the front burner since November 2024, when the board asked the Department of Public Works and Steve Horton, a construction consultant based in Marlborough, New Hampshire, to devise a plan to convert the space.
According to a memo from Town Manager John Potter, the town retained Robin Sweetapple of R.R. Sweetapple Redevelopment Consulting for design and HVAC engineering services in anticipation of the project.
The plan moving forward is to create three public bathrooms, one of which complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, in the space. It will also include offices and meeting rooms for the Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team (BRAT), and space for Community Resource Specialist Justin Johnson.
The Transportation Center space will continue to be the headquarters for the town parking enforcement office.
The unarmed BRAT unit, under the auspices of the Brattleboro Police Department, prioritizes deescalation by building trust, as well as by monitoring safety.
Assistant Department of Public Works Director Pete Lynch said at the meeting that the space is about 2,786 square feet.
The town received only one bid, from All Seasons, for $664,623. The company previously built a maintenance shed at the park.
Lynch said those looking at the project, including Project Manager Horton, identified "more efficiencies" and brought the project construction budget down to about $550,000.
The board had approved a budget of up to $707,000 in March.
Lynch said he hopes that work on the renovation will begin in August and complete in November, with the BRAT team installed in the space by October.
"It seems to be the revitalization for that building," Lynch said. "People are starting to show interest in the building spaces."
Logistics and timing
Ellis-Thurber proposed "a tweak in the design for cost-savings and practicality."
She went on to note the "highly impractical" publicly available restrooms that, in the plan, opened to the outdoors.
Also concerned about heating costs in winter and about issues with cleaning, Ellis-Thurber proposed moving the restroom access inside the building.
"I think this is a matter of conscience for serving people who have needs in our community; that it's important that they interact with other human beings and that they're not relegated to an exterior, metal bathroom," she said, adding that "in plain language" the design is "really engineered for people to be engaged in behavior that's potentially very unhealthy."
"I would remind that board that those bathrooms are closed off right now to the public because of all of the problems we had with what was happening in those, with overdoses and debris that was being left in them, and left unsafe," said Assistant Police Chief Jeremy Evans.
Evans said that is because at the police department, "we don't have staff, with those bathrooms, and that's not going to change."
"I see us reinviting that same problem all over again, if we open them back up," he continued. "I think that's why we were looking at the [outside] bathrooms."
"To retrofit [the bathrooms] to make [them] safe for everybody at all times of the day, I think there would be some costs associated with that," said Lynch.
Ultimately, the board amended the motion to approve the contract to not exceed the $550,000 allocation, but also to find space inside for the bathrooms.
The dissenting view
Not all board members agreed with signing a contract now.
"We're currently facing some significant financial challenges that we weren't a year ago," said Evans-Frantz, noting a double-digit property tax increase and reserve-fund depletion.
He suggested the board look at the plan for the FY27 budget.
McLoughlin pointed out the town will use revolving loan fund money to pay for this project, not tax money, and said she did not agree with her colleague.
"This is a necessary function of the BRAT team and police department and the resource specialist and all the good things that are part of the Downtown Safety Action Plan," said McLoughlin, adding the plan also allows for the potential reuse of the transportation center.
"This is money that is available to us," agreed Evans-Frantz. "It could be used for any number of things, but it's our money, as a town, and there'll be a financial impact on us if we spend this."
Heller, praising the work that has gone into the plan, asked the board to wait a year to award the contract because the town is facing serious budget trouble.
"It can be very tempting and appealing to look at a problem and say, 'Great, let's make this big investment,'" he said. "But I think we have to take the bigger view."
Heller added that the town has already "spent a really large amount of money on phase one of the Downtown Safety Action Plan in the last 12 months, and we've seen the difficulties that it's put us in."
Saying the changes the town has made and the safety action plan are working "and things are getting better," Heller also said spending $660,000 on a satellite police station downtown is not the "prudent thing."
That, he said, would be waiting a year to "see if we really need it."
"If this thing costs $3 million and we could have built in a week then, we would have done it," said Case. "You're putting a price on public safety."
Case noted the board's many interactions this year with the public about the need for a police presence downtown and pointed out that the plan, at its inception, was projected to cost more than $1 million.
"It's an integral part of the Downtown Safety Action Plan," McLoughlin said, noting that the town would benefit from using the revolving fund money and reusing an existing building.
"I don't think waiting serves any value at all, and letting the police department, the BRAT team, the resource officers - all those good things - function as the chief has intended is only a good thing for our town, is invaluable, and is not costing the taxpayers a dime," she said.
Ellis-Thurber agreed with McLoughlin, noting the corridor in question is particularly vulnerable because children walk it to and from the Boys and Girls Club and the New England Youth Theatre.
"Those are amazing things we have in our community. We want our youth to participate in them. We want families to feel comfortable, and this is one step toward that," she said.
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.