LAGO VISTA—City Manager Bill Angelo and Assistant City Manager Frank Robbins showed a conceptual plan for the Lago Vista Police Department’s new headquarters during a special-called City Council meeting Dec. 30.
The Council posed questions on expansion capabilities and including public input for the new police building. The police building will become part of a city complex with City Hall and the public library along Dawn Drive west of Lago Vista Elementary School. The current police building on Bar-K Ranch Road will become property of North Lake Travis Fire & Rescue after the new police building is built.
The conceptual plan shows the police building at about 7,000 square feet and a cost of about $1.3 million. The building site is on two of about six acres the city is in works to buy from the Lago Vista school district.
Angelo said the property allows the city to expand the building with plenty of room to spare.
“One of the guiding principles has been to have it constructed in a way that if we ever expand toward the back we wouldn’t disrupt the existing operations,” he said.
Angelo, Robbins, Police Chief Danny Smith and Sgt. Daniel Reid have worked together on planning the building, with Reid taking classes on police facility layouts and design while working with fellow officers on planning the internal layout of the building.
Councilman Dale Mitchell asked if bringing a facilities committee—much like the facilities committee used for Jonestown’s new police building—would be an effective part of the planning process. Angelo shied away from the idea, since police staff understood what the building needed.
“I really wouldn’t want to have a whole lot of public input, he said. “They (police officers) should really be involved in the internal layout of the building.”
Mayor Randy Kruger agreed with Angelo. “Sometimes a committee drags everything down pretty heavy in terms of expediting to get things done,” he said.
Angelo said the city looked at the city of Jonestown’s police building and decided on things to leave out in the Lago Vista police building. One of those things, he said, was a jail cell.
“We do not want to run a jail,” he said. “When you start establishing jail cells, you have to meet Texas and federal jail standards which get incredibly expensive.”