With just two less-than-perfect options for a location for a new police station, members of the Bainbridge Island City Council have been talking privately about using the city’s condemnation powers to acquire land for its new public safety facility.

This week, that notion nudged its way into the public discussion of what to do next on the city’s more than a decade-long quest to build a new police headquarters.

Mayor Kol Medina said Tuesday that city officials have recently explored using eminent domain to acquire a property on NE New Brooklyn Road as the site for the new station.

The city had earlier hoped to buy that land, a 1.89-acre site commonly known as the “Coultas property.” That site had been chosen as the city’s preferred location last August, but talks on a land purchase went sideways after the owner of the property died in March 2017. The council officially crossed the site of its list of potential locations last September.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, Medina said he did not think that a majority of the council would agree to use eminent domain, however.

“In our discussions about that it seemed apparent, to me, anyway, that there might not be a majority of council members in support of using eminent domain power,” Medina said.

Still, as a compromise approach, Medina said the council could authorize city staff to take a closer look at the Harrison Bainbridge Urgent Care building to see if the medical facility could be renovated in a way that it could be used as the new home for the Bainbridge police department.

The property owners of the land on NE New Brooklyn Road could also be approached and told of the city’s recent discussions about their land, he said.

That approach eventually won council approval, on the slimmest of votes, a 3-2 decision.

Beforehand, however, Councilman Ron Peltier asked the council to set up a 10-member citizen task force to take over the site selection process.

The members, approved by the city council, would review a list of potential locations and use a weighted criteria scoring matrix to rank the sites.

In a four-page summary of the proposal, it noted the city’s current approach was dependent on paid consultants and was “an unwieldy process that involves considerable expense at each junction.”

“The city council, for its part, is not being provided with the comprehensive overview required to make an informed site selection decision. The approach to date has tended to start out with the most expensive design options This needs to be turned around, starting out with the most basic design options and adding features to fit an acceptable budget.”

Councilwoman Rasham Nassar said she supported creating a task force, one that could enlist the professional expertise of people in the community.

“I’m clearly in favor of trying a different approach at this point,” she said.

Nassar noted the city has spent $333,900 in consulting fees on the project since 2016.

“I don’t know if that’s normal,” she said, adding that a more detailed look at the Harrison site would add another $40,000 in consultant costs. “I think we can do better.”

Councilwoman Sarah Blossom disagreed.

“This has to move forward at some point,” Blossom said. “It goes on and on and on and on. And it just needs to move forward.”

Councilman Joe Deets said the sites still under location weren’t perfect, but they were good enough. Council members were elected to make decisions, he added.

“I just don’t want to delay any more,” Deets said.

The move to have staff continue its review of the Harrison and New Brooklyn sites passed on 3-2 vote, with Medina, Blossom and Deets in favor, and Peltier and Nassar, opposed. (Councilman Matthew Tirman was absent, and the council’s seventh seat remains vacant from the recent resignation of Mike Scott.)

The recent talk of obtaining land for the new police station via eminent domain isn’t the first time that approach has entered conversations about the location for the new police station.

In 2014, officials had flirted with the idea of obtaining the land next to city hall, where Island Fitness is located, for a combined police station/municipal court.

Public outcry made that idea a non-starter, and council members directed city staff to focus on properties that would have a willing seller.