Delta police ready for new digs

7/4/2002

DELTA - The village police department is expected to move into a former Pike-Delta-York school administration building in August and the Delta Chamber of Commerce is to move in September into the space the police now use in the village administration building.

Village administrator Gary Baker said he expects $14,500 in interior renovations at the school building to be done by Aug. 1. The village signed a five-year lease with the school district early last winter for the building at 421 Fernwood St., west of Delta Elementary School. The rent is $500 a month and does not include utilities.

Mr. Baker said the village hopes to purchase the building someday. It will give the 10-member police department 3,500 square feet, up from about 1,000 square feet it has now in the village offices on Main Street.

Chief Garry Chamberlin said that much of the police department's work is done in a 15-by-7-foot room where, “If one of us moves to do something, someone else has to move to get out of the way.”

The village will not charge rent to the Chamber of Commerce, which Mr. Baker said has never had offices. The organization of 85 members does not employ staff and has only had an answering machine in the village hall that volunteers check.

“This is really going to be a step up for us,” said Marcy LeFevre, president of the chamber and a village council member.

She said she hoped to staff the chamber's new space with volunteers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays and operate as a visitor's bureau, giving out information on the local fine arts association and Fulton County attractions, as well as a business people's group.

Also Monday, the council:

Heard that paving the swimming pool parking lot, a project proposed for next year, is expected to be twice as costly as Mr. Baker had predicted. An engineer estimated $102,000 would be needed to cover with blacktop the oval shaped lot that can park about 100 vehicles.

The 45-year-old parking lot has never truly been paved, although it has been covered with tar and chip in some areas, Mr. Baker said.

Council is expected to consider late this summer authorizing engineering work on the lot. The park board will be asked to consider using profits from the Delta Chicken Festival to pay for half of the work. If that were approved, the village likely would use capital improvement funds for the other half, Mr. Baker said.

Heard a group of about six neighbors of 409 Palmwood Street ask council to condemn the house, and perhaps order it torn down. The unoccupied house, which is behind the village hall, harbors cats and other animals and has open entrances that children could use, several said.

Unanimously voted in favor of a resolution supporting the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. The resolution, in light of the recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals 9th Circuit that the pledge is unconstitutional, is to be sent to all state and national legislators whose territory includes Delta.