NEW LONDON — New concerns about the town’s public works facility are overshadowing longstanding plans for a new police station as voters prepare to vote this week on two police station-related articles rejected at Town Meeting in March.

The years-long effort to build a new police station aims to address functionality, accessibility and industry code issues at the department’s current home in the center of New London. But, in March, Director of Public Works Sam Clarke learned of issues with the department’s main garage and office building that led to its sudden closure.

Now New London residents must determine if it is responsible to invest in a new police station, while facing the unknown cost of demolishing and replacing the defunct Department of Public Works building just a half mile South of Main Street.

Residents will reconvene Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Hogan Center Gym at Colby-Sawyer College to vote on a nearly $1 million bond to purchase property and continue planning and site work for a new police station. The proposal failed to garner the necessary 66% supermajority support in March. Residents successfully moved to reconsider both the bond and a separate article including the associated debt service during Town Meeting.

But since learning of the problems with the public works facility, town officials have backed away from the police station plan.

“The safety of our workers and my co-workers at DPW are of the utmost importance to I know me, the Police Department, and certainly to the citizens,” Police Chief Emily Cobb said in a recording of an April 17 Selectboard meeting.

She supported prioritizing the future of the public works bui lding even if it will likely impact the police station project.

The Selectboard voted unanimously to revoke its recommendation for the police station bond at its meeting on April 23.

“My desire would be to take on both projects at once, but I want to be respectful of the taxpayers and that might be too much to ask of them at this point,” Chairwoman Bebe Casey said at the beginning of the meeting.

Police Facilities Advisory Committee Chairwoman Ashley Seybold also said she wouldn’t support the police station bond now given the uncertainty.

Others at the meeting cautioned against putting off the next step in the nearly $15 million police station project because costs will likely increase with time. The town has been working on plans for a new police station for decades, with the earliest discussions about renovating the station in the 1970s. The topic came up again in 2014 and a study in 2018 revealed that the facility was inadequate and started the process to renovate or build a new station in earnest.

The property has security issues, being directly on the town green and sharing a driveway with a private residence, is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and elements of the building do not meet industry code standards. It also has had sewage issues and other problems like a poor layout and communication equipment holding the same space as a water main and sprinkler system.

Resident Dorothy Hitchmoth said she wants to see the town move forward with the police station bond, but also called for the Selectboard to create a strategic plan to outline all of the town’s projects, costs and needs.

“I think and I hope as a town we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Hitchmoth said during the April 23 meeting.

Clarke is recommending that the public works building be torn down and rebuilt based on a draft opinion from a structural engineer.

“We have a standing building that is of structural concern and as long as it’s standing my thought is it’s at risk of collapsing,” Clarke said in an interview Friday. The building is now locked after being vacated in mid-April, but the New London Public Works facility is not gated so “people can come up and look at it after hours,” he said, increasing the safety risk.

The public works garage “is a very unique building type,” that was converted from a former barn in the 1920s. It is not built with a standard post and beam or truss system, Clarke said, making it both difficult to assess and to repair.

There are a “multitude” of structural issues with the garage’s main support system, such as collar ties, or horizontal portions of the roof framing that hold tension, with cracks and deflection and rafters separating from the rest of the building.

The issues started to come to light in March when Clarke was made aware of the early results of a town-wide review of municipal buildings and encouraged to look at the building’s structure himself. After doing this he quickly contacted a structural engineer to do a formal assessment.

Currently, Clarke is waiting on the results of an asbestos inspection that will help confirm how to move forward. If approved, the demolition work is expected to cost between $10,000 and $15,000.

For the next two years, the Public Works Department will be based out of two rented office trailers and a storage trailer. Each office trailer costs $995 per month and the storage trailer costs $180 per month. Over two years, this amounts to more than $50,000.

The town is “optimistically” targeting two years to rebuild, Clarke said. Plans for a new building would have to be approved by voters at Town Meeting next year, followed by hiring a contractor “which — with the current climate — could take a while” and construction will span 12 to 18 months.

Still, despite the new working situation, “We always like to say that public works is a pretty unique group of people in that sense that we persevere,” Clarke said.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.