Fixes to ECPD HQ coming this spring
By BRENDA SOMMER bsommer@leader-news.com

Work to revamp El Campo Police headquarters should get started this spring, if the process to arrange construction proceeds at its current pace.

"We have to go out for bids - we haven't done that yet, but we're fixing to," said Leonard Sternadel, city community service director.

"We visited with the architects and are doing a little finishing up on the bid specifications." Once those are complete, the city will place advertisements seeking bids, then award the project to a builder.

Sternadel said his best guess is construction will begin in March or April.

"The work should be done in a year from the time they start building," he said.

The city of El Campo decided in November to issue $1.65 million in certificates of obligations for $2.9 million in renovations at the Civic Center and police station as well as a new animal control building and fire truck. The remainder of the needed funding will come from the city's fund balance.

That means $500,000 in changes are in the pipeline for the police department's leaky roof and crowded spaces. The roof leaks directly above the communications office, with water running down the wall next to all of the department's radio and computer equipment.

"We have tried everything imaginable to patch that leak and we have been unsuccessful," ECPD Chief Jim Elliott has said of the building, built in 1974.

That communications room will be expanded 10 feet out into the current front parking lot. The current "sally port" - a secure parking space where people under arrest are driven into the facility - will be closed in and converted into office and record space.

The future lot will have angle parking accessed from Jackson Street, exiting onto Merchant, one-way.

Other changes at the almost 8,000-square-foot facility include creating a preliminary booking room with a "cage."