North Hempstead Town Council approves $32 million bond for Port Washington Police Department

The Port Washington Police District will spend $32 million to build a new headquarters after decades of trying to move out of cramped quarters. Now the North Hempstead Town Council has approved the project despite fierce opposition from the community.

The police district can borrow $32 million over 30 years to build the new 25,000-square-foot facility in a former funeral home on Main Street. The North Hempstead Town Council voted 6-0 on July 2 to borrow money for the project.

The department urgently needs to move out of its headquarters, county officials said. The current headquarters, built in 1958 and designed to house 35 people, is too small for a department that employs 64 officers and 20 support staff, officials said. The new building will be nearly three times the size of the current one, which is 9,000 square feet and is located about a mile away on Port Washington Boulevard.

“This is a huge relief,” said Robert Del Muro, chief of the Port Washington Police District. “The building we are building is designed to last for the next 50 to 100 years, so we don’t have to replace it again.”

Property owners will see their county police taxes increase from $106 to $265 as a result of borrowing on homes valued between $600,000 and $1.5 million, according to a presentation prepared by the county.

Efforts to build a new police headquarters have been underway since 1997, Del Muro said. The district has been working to replace the current headquarters, which was last renovated in the 1980s.

There are not enough lockers for the police officers, Del Muro said, and because there are no changing rooms for women in the building, female police officers have to change in a “utility room with active electrical lines” that was retrofitted especially for them, the presentation said. The new headquarters will have separate changing rooms for men and women.

Some residents have objected to the project, saying the headquarters would be too large for the hamlet’s main business district and would cause traffic congestion there. In December, the borough paid $8.8 million to purchase the former Austin F. Knowles Funeral Home on Main Street and six nearby homes.

Steve Kaplan, a resident of Port Washington North, organized a petition calling for a public referendum on the bond proposal. He collected more than 230 signatures, he said, but the city has declined to hold a referendum.

“We think that’s a little too much, and I don’t know if we need that much,” Kaplan said. “Now we’re being pushed into a corner where we don’t agree.”

Frank Scobbo, a former district police commissioner, said the footprint for the headquarters was not that big.

“In its current form, it’s way too much,” said Scobbo, who served as commissioner from 2020 to 2022. “With today’s technology, you need less space. … You don’t need as much space as you used to, you had to keep a certain amount of records over a certain period of time.”

County officials said there is not enough room to park police vehicles because many of them are stationed off-site. The county has also run out of space to store police property and evidence, and much of it has been moved to a garage, officials said.