The Bainbridge Island City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to abandon efforts to buy land north of city hall for a new public safety building.
The move to jettison plans for a land purchase to build a new police station and municipal court — and meld the new construction into a city government campus on Madison Avenue — followed the crushing defeat of Proposition 1 at the ballot box on Nov. 3 and continued citizen unrest over the controversial proposal.
Prop. 1, which would have authorized the sale of $15 million in bonds to pay for three parcels north of city hall and the development of a public safety building to replace the aging police station on Winslow Way, fell to defeat two weeks ago with a 75 percent “no” vote from voters. The proposition needed a 60 percent supermajority to pass.
In the weeks leading up to the election, islanders criticized the police station measure for its proposed location on Madison Avenue and also raised concerns over the cost of the project.
Scrutiny of the proposal intensified in October after city officials announced they had learned that one of the properties just north of city hall was highly contaminated with cleaning solvents that were dumped on the property when it once was home to a dry cleaning business.
The controversy over Prop. 1 has not subsided in the weeks since the General Election, however. Bainbridge residents have been adding their names to an online petition asking the city to drop its plans for a Madison Avenue police station and start over.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, islanders who were asking the city to hit the reset button packed council chambers, with some holding green-and-black signs reading “I VOTED NO – PROP 1 – TOO COSTLY – WRONG PLACE.”
Islander and former city councilwoman Debbi Lester told the council the petition already had 216 signatures and the group’s goal was to get 1,200 in support of the request to begin anew.
Later in the meeting, Councilman Steve Bonkowski asked the council to direct City Manager Doug Schulze to stop discussions of acquiring the land next to city hall or any further evaluation of the land.
In a 7-0 vote, the council agreed.
The change in direction also means the city will abandon the idea of doing more environmental tests on the property adjacent to city hall to further gauge the extent of polluted soils and groundwater.
City officials had been talking in recent weeks of conducting more tests on the property. Tests by the city’s environmental consultants have already determined that the contamination of the property may extend to more than 15 feet beneath the surface; that groundwater may have been polluted by the chlorinated dry-cleaning solvents PCE (Tetrachloroethen) and TCE (Trichloroethene); and vapor from the pollutants may impact air quality not only on the site but in city hall, the mobile home park to the east and the commercial building to the north of the property. PCE found in 11 of the 20 soil samples taken from the property were above compliance levels set by the state Department of Ecology.
Air quality tests have been conducted at city hall, but results have not yet been received, city spokeswoman Kellie Stickney said Wednesday.
The tests at city hall cost $1,575, Stickney said.
Additional tests on the property next to city hall are no longer planned.
