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City leaders agreed to improve and modernize the more than 100-year-old police station building, which continues causing problems for staff members.
The police department building is frequently filled with smells of sewer gas, among other issues such as the smell of natural gas. At the Moundsville Finance Committee meeting Tuesday, Police Chief Thomas Mitchell said they had an assessment performed on the building when the police department first moved in years ago, but regular improvements revealed more problems as time went on.
"We've been doing some improvements to the building, but we've got things come up that might possibly be in the category of major expenditures," Mitchell said. "We're going to be shoring up the foundation of the building. We had a bid come in from one company, that involved propping things up, installing posts, and it was a big engineering thing, and it's $35,000 for that. We had another company come in (Tuesday), and they were in the process of giving us a free estimate."
In addition to the foundation problems, Mitchell also discussed issues such as the glass used in the windows. While the glass in the lobby was replaced with safety glass -- after an incident last January, where a belligerent woman pitched herself out of a chair during a confrontation and through the window, receiving serious injuries -- the glass to the left of the doors in the detective's office remains plate glass, capable of being broken into large, dangerous shards.
"That's in the neighborhood of $8,000 to replace that glass and the door," Mitchell said. "It's quite dangerous. It's not on the detective's side, so it's not as critical, not as much activity. … It's an old building, but we're fortunate to have the space. I like it."
Window replacement is also to take place, Mitchell said, on the second floor, which currently serves as an evidence room and storage room. Of somewhat higher priority was the smell of gas, both natural gas and sewer gas, which occasionally permeates the building, such as earlier in the day, when the surveyor on site reported the smell of natural gas while in the basement, prompting a response from the Moundsville Fire Department. Mitchell pointed out that several gas lines run through the building, which were disconnected several years ago. The second and third floors once served as residential apartments before the police department began using the structure.
The committee voted to approve Mitchell's independent action to collect estimates for possible repair work and submit them to the city, as is required with jobs worth over $25,000.