Burlington Police Department cruisers parked outside the department in Burlington on Monday, August 26, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerBURLINGTON — The Burlington Police Department’s headquarters is in bad shape.Duct tape lines the hallways to cover the building’s buckling floors, the ceiling often leaks on the employees working there, and to enter the building, visitors must call the main desk via an old hardwired phone line in the building’s lobby.The building at One North Avenue has been many things since it was first built — an auto sales and service center, an Acme paint and glass company, for example — and since 1995, it’s been home to the Burlington Police Department. The city police moved from their old location on South Winooski Avenue after the building was gifted to the department by Tony Pomerleau, a real estate developer and former chair of the police commission.But the building’s age has started to show. Built in the early 20th century and last renovated in 1995, the building is one of the oldest police facilities in the county. Its condition has contributed in recent years to the department’s plummeting morale. Top police officials say the building is not equipped to function as a modern police facility.“This building is showing its age, and it’s got issues that we’re concerned about, not just with regard to whether or not it’s a pleasant place to work, but also with regard to whether it’s a good recruiting tool, which, in its current condition, we don’t think it is,” Jon Murad, the city’s outgoing police chief, said in an interview this month.The building lacks proper space for interview rooms, where officers bring suspects in for questioning, and lacks space for victims of crimes as well. In an internal survey obtained by VTDigger this month, respondents criticized the building’s condition.One respondent called it “an extremely inefficient work space.” Another said it was “embarrassing to walk community members through our police department for fingerprints, a tour, or a potential new hire.”But concerns have also been raised over whether the building is “a healthy place to work,” Murad said.“This building was a lot of things before it was a police department, and a lot of those things involved industrial chemicals, whether it’s paint stores or whether it’s automotive stuff,” Murad said. “There are concerns about that.”According to the internal survey and additional records and emails obtained this week through a public records request, staff have raised concerns to department leadership that the building’s condition may be causing health issues among those working there.“It is clear our building is not only a biohazard, but a dangerous working environment where employees can become hurt in or become sick from,” one respondent said.Other respondents suggested that the building is actually making them sick. Officers in the survey said they “feel like we are walking in a mold-ridden building with no consistent air flow.”Concerns over the building prompted the city in 2022 to hire an environmental consultant and a hazardous building material specialist to conduct an onsite evaluation of the building.Murad notified the department staff of the environmental review in a 2022 email to staff obtained via the records request.“The root cause of the reported health issues is not known and the science connecting health conditions with environmental factors specific to a building or property is extremely complicated,” Murad wrote at the time.Murad in a phone call Tuesday said he couldn’t detail specific health issues that have been brought to his attention.READ MORE ‘We are in a crisis’: Internal survey shows deep discontent among Burlington police by Corey McDonald November 22, 2024, 6:51 amNovember 22, 2024, 9:50 am Unanswered questionsThe environmental review, conducted in late 2022 and completed in January 2023, included a surface level inspection of the building, and used historical records to identify previous uses of the property, according to documents.The objective, records show, “was to identify visible concerns related to presence of asbestos containing materials, lead-based paint, microbial growth on building substrates, and PCBs in building materials.”While many of the findings of the review were inconclusive, the study did find that materials detected inside the building suggest harmful chemicals may be present in the building’s infrastructure.“Numerous suspect asbestos containing materials” were observed by the environmental consultants, and a small quantity of thermal system insulation in the basement “likely contains asbestos” in a few locations, according to the environmental review.The review noted the building’s history as an auto service shop and paint and glass company, and surmised that “hazardous materials and/or petroleum products” could be present in the underlying soil.But ultimately, the study did not come to any definitive conclusions, and recommended that additional measurements and sampling be conducted to identify potentially harmful materials in the building or in the soil or groundwater.“Although the root cause of the reported health issues at the property is not understood at this time, poor indoor air quality (originating from potential interior and/or exterior sources) and exposure to, or ingestion of, potentially hazardous building materials are two possible factors that should be considered,” the review reads.Burlington has had a troubling history with harmful chemicals in its buildings. The city in 2019 detected probable cancer-causing chemicals in Burlington High School, and a year later shut the building down, forcing the city’s high school students into the former Macy’s department store on Cherry Street.Several lawsuits have since been filed over the high school’s contamination and its suspected health effects, and are playing out in court. A new high school is being constructed at the same location in the city’s New North End.The environmental review of One North Avenue has since left police leadership with more questions than answers.“We have parts of our floor that are buckling in ways that we have not been able to explain via broken pipes or water or anything,” Murad said. “So what is happening here to make this floor do this?”Joe Corrow, the head of the Burlington Police Officers’ Association, said the union “is planning on making a couple of requests related to air quality and such in the building … to determine if there is something else that’s being missed here.”“We want everybody that works here to be able to be healthy, and I would hate to see that I’m doing my best to stay healthy every day when I’m coming to a building that’s causing me to become unhealthy in some way, shape or form,” he said.The study was completed in early 2023 and presented to the city in February of that year, but had not been shared with the department until July of this year, when the survey was still being conducted, emails show.It prompted frustration within the department, with respondents in the survey saying that the city had yet not shared the review’s results with them.Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak in an interview said that the environmental review’s results had not been shared with the department prior to her administration, but said she “made sure they were shared” with police leadership.‘We have to change course’The city’s elected leadership has since taken notice of the building’s condition.In September, city councilors introduced a resolution asking the mayor’s administration for “an assessment of needed repairs and associated costs” for the building, as well as “a proposal on any budget amendments necessary to ensure these repairs are completed by the end of this calendar year.”The resolution was postponed that month, and again in October, to give the administration more time to find alternatives.“We are embarking on building a new facility at this point, because it’s clear to me that not only the police department building, but also our central fire station, are in such disrepair that it is just not a safe place for people to be working,” Mulvaney-Stanak said in an interview this month.Rehabilitating the current police building, she said, is likely off the table. “There’s so much disrepair there that we have to change course,” she said.Her administration, in partnership with police leadership, is now looking for a new location for police headquarters.The city is currently in a scoping phase for a new building. Once that is complete, the city will put out a request for a consultant to help find a location and help leverage public-private partnerships in financing its construction.But it could be a tough proposition for the city and for taxpayers. The city earlier this year closed a more than $14 million budget gap by using one-time reserve funds.Mulvaney-Stanak has said previously that the city needs to “right-size” the city government’s finances to sustain city services.“The reality of the city finances is that we not only have not kept up with a lot of deferred maintenance … but we’re also continuing to have operating budget gaps,” Mulvaney-Stanak said in an interview.“To make this all work,” she said, “we really have to be very strategic on partnerships and planning and the order of how we figure out a way to keep the city affordable and pace all these other needs that we have.”Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington’s dilapidated police building is dragging down department morale — and spurring concerns of health risks.