NORTH PORT, Fla. (WFLA) – The City of North Port has seen exponential growth in the last several years and was recently named one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation.
With that growth comes some challenges, such as infrastructure.
The city’s 32,000-square-foot police department headquarters opened back in 2006 when the agency had 79 sworn officers and 30 civilian staff members. Now, with 144 sworn officers and 52 civilians, the facility is running out of space.
They’ve tried retrofitting numerous spaces throughout the building, turning conference rooms, filing areas, and closets into office space.
“Staff was just making do with what we could handle at the time and just being creative. We can’t think of any more creativity and now, we have to go outside and add portables to the outside of our back parking lot,” said Deputy Chief of Police Chris Morales.
That is the short-term solution. Morales tells us the long-term answer is a new, larger headquarters that will take the department well into the 2060s.
“I can tell you right now the challenges we are facing is placement for our staff, workable conditions for our staff. We are now experiencing the challenges of displacement. When you have displacement in an organization, that affects efficiency. We want to stay ahead of the curve, and not be behind the curve. We want to keep our agency up with the growth of the city, because when your growth outweighs your police services and emergency operation services, that is when it becomes very problematic for public safety,” said Morales.
The state-of-the-art facility comes with a hefty price tag of up to $122,000,000.
City Manager Jerome Fletcher says without supplemental funding, that price tag is going to be too much of a burden for taxpayers to bear.
“At the end of the day, this country, the city, everyone is feeling the effects of a lot of different pain points and we do not want to add to that pain point, but we have to do what is best by most of the people in the city and that is making sure that we keep everyone safe,” said Fletcher. “The efficiency that you want to have with your law enforcement is critical. You want to know that they are going to arrive in a reasonable amount of time to make an impact and save a life more times than not. In order to do that, they have to have the volume and the officers to do so,” he continued.
Commissioners will discuss the possibility of moving forward with a new police department at a meeting later this week. If they decide to take action at the commission meeting later this month, Fletcher says his goal will be to get a bond referendum on the ballot ahead of the August Primary election.
