Keeping the current police station means funding its repairs

Sarnia’s existing police station remains in daily use, and continued use comes with repair costs. A 2023 building assessment identified $4.45 million in critical repairs and upgrades, and recent board updates say immediate maintenance needs remain. If the city keeps relying on the Christina Street facility, those deficiencies should be brought forward clearly in the next budget and funded as part of the tradeoff.

Continued use of Sarnia’s existing police station comes with a cost.

The Christina Street facility remains the working home of the Sarnia Police Service. Officers work there, members of the public attend there, detainees are processed there, and the building’s custody, technology, training and operational spaces still have to function.

That makes the documented deficiencies in the current station a present budget issue. If the city continues relying on the facility, it also has to fund the repairs and maintenance required to keep it usable.

A June 2023 Headquarters Building Condition Assessment identified $4.45 million in critical repairs and upgrades at the current police headquarters. The Sarnia Police facility project page summarizes the assessment by saying the headquarters requires those critical repairs and upgrades, while also noting that a new facility was recommended.

The long-term facility question is not the focus here. The immediate issue is simpler. Sarnia is still using the existing building, and continued use is not cost-free.

That is the tradeoff. Keeping the current facility in service may avoid, delay or reduce larger capital pressures, but it does not eliminate the cost of the building itself. It shifts the city’s attention back to maintenance, repairs, temporary solutions and the practical risks of relying on an aging civic asset.

Deferred repairs do not disappear. They become risk, disruption and, eventually, higher costs.

That principle is not unique to policing. It is basic asset management. When a municipality keeps using a building, road, bridge, arena, watermain or storm sewer, it also accepts responsibility for keeping that asset functional. Sarnia has seen this across its wider infrastructure debate: delaying replacement or major reconstruction may be necessary in a constrained budget environment, but delay is not the same as resolution.

The police station should be treated with the same clarity.

Recent board messaging has continued to identify immediate repair and maintenance needs at the existing facility, along with deficiencies in space, prisoner custody, IT infrastructure and police-specific training. The Sarnia Police Services Board has also said those requirements must now be addressed through temporary and long-term solutions.

That is the practical reality before council and the board as the next budget cycle approaches.

The city does not need to settle every long-term facility question in order to acknowledge that the current station requires attention. It does not need to revisit every previous argument about police accommodation in order to decide whether documented repairs should be funded. It does not need to pretend the building is fine simply because the broader facility conversation remains unresolved.

A working police station is still a public building. It has staff inside it. It has members of the public moving through it. It has detainees in custody. It has technology and evidence systems that must function reliably. It has workplace, safety and operational needs that do not pause while budget politics continue.

The responsible position is to separate the immediate from the eventual.

Immediate repairs and maintenance should be brought forward clearly, costed honestly and debated directly. If the city intends to continue using the existing station, then the costs of that use should appear plainly in the budget. If the work is staged over several years, that staging should be explained. If some items are urgent and others can wait, that distinction should be made public.

What should not happen is quiet deferral.

There is a tendency in municipal politics to treat avoided spending as savings. Sometimes it is. More often, with aging infrastructure, it is simply a transfer of cost into the future. The bill may leave one budget year, but the asset continues to deteriorate.

That is the danger here.

Sarnia can choose to keep using the current police station. It can decide that continued use, with repairs, is the right tradeoff for now. It can decide that the public interest is best served by stabilizing the existing facility while longer-term needs are assessed carefully. Those are legitimate choices.

But they are not no-cost choices.

If the Christina Street station remains the city’s police headquarters, then the city needs to treat it like a facility it actually intends to use. That means funding necessary repairs, addressing known deficiencies and being honest with taxpayers about the cost of keeping the building functional.

The next budget should not allow those deficiencies to fade into the background.

Continued use of the existing police station may be a reasonable tradeoff. But the tradeoff has to be accepted honestly. Keeping the building means maintaining the building.