THURMONT, Md. – A town commissioner who once tried to scale down the size of the new Thurmont Police station when he was on the Thurmont Police Commission now wants to try and lease space in the building to other agencies.

Thurmont Commissioner Robert Lookingbill proposed in e-mail to other town commissioners, which obtained by The Dispatch through a freedom of information request, to put “the building on hold once it is under roof until we can decide to include or not include the Sheriff’s Department.”

Lookingbill has expressed concerns about the $1.8 million cost of the building and the still-unknown cost to operate it. In e-mail he also expressed doubt about who was making the decisions for what should be or not be in the building. This group included then-Commissioner Bill Blakeslee, Thurmont Police Chief Greg Eyler and police commission members Kenny Oland and Tom Iaccarrino as well as the architects.

“It was my opinion then, and remains so, that much of the reason for this was to be able to ‘steam roll’ items pertaining to this building through without much information being made available to the public. This now being ‘water under the bridge’ more or less it has allowed me, in my opinion, to see how this works. I keep thinking about the old saying ‘giving the fox the keys to the hen house.’ I would hope this is not the case but as they say perception means a lot,” Lookingbill wrote.

Despite his hesitation now, Lookingbill supported the original bid by NuTec design to build the station for $1.8 million in March 2006. At that time, participation by the Frederick County Sheriff’s office would have delayed the opening of the building, increased the size, increased the cost and ceded some control of the town-owned building over to the county. According to Frederick County officials at the time, the town’s share to have a sheriff’s substation would have been more than $2 million.

Even then-Sheriff James Hagy said that part of the problem with the sheriff’s office being part of the project were the county’s conditions on it. “I think they (Thurmont commissioners) had some heartburn with the way the county dealt with them,” Hagy said in March 2006.

The police commission and the town commission both approved the project and Lookingbill’s position to scale back the project did not come about until December 2006.

“For the amount of money it’s costing, we need to try to recover some of the costs somehow,” Lookingbill said.

With his newest proposal, he said that even if the sheriff’s office was not included in the project perhaps the town’s administrative offices could be moved there.

“This is a monster of a building and there’s room for other people in it. And the other people will be able to help pay the bills,” Lookingbill said.

Mayor Martin Burns pointed out that the building had been studied and discussed by the police commission for months. Sheriff Chuck Jenkins had also been contacted recently to see if he was interested, but the sheriff had told the town it was not in his capital budget or in his vision for the area. Furthermore, delays with a project underway would only cost the town more money.

Commissioner Ron Terpko intimated that it was personality conflicts that kept the sheriff out of the new building, but Eyler says, “We had some differences with the former sheriff but that was not the reason; money and time delays were.”

Then the topic of charging for what would essentially be mutual aid came up. The different policing agencies back each other up when needed even outside of their jurisdiction. For instance, when Thurmont’s police manpower was stretched thin recently, Jenkins offered Eyler sheriff’s deputies to fill in any gaps. If Eyler had accepted the offer, it would not have cost the town.

“If we start charging them, you can bet your high dollar they’re going to start charging us,” Burns said.

He said charging the deputies and state troopers to use the new building would damage the relationship Thurmont police have with both agencies. Eyler agreed that it could damage the relationship.

Many of the features in the new building are needed if the police department hopes to become accredited. The building was designed with some growing room in mind, but Eyler estimates that once the police move into the building, there might only be two available offices and one of them will be needed for the code enforcement officer when he or she is needed.

During the Nov. 28 Police Commission meeting, all of the commission agreed that Lookingbill is entitled to his opinion, but they were frustrated that he was raising the issue now and feel that the police need the new building and it should continue moving forward. The town commissioners feel the same way, though they still are planning on meeting with Jenkins to talk about the issue.

The commissioners and the police commission are also both concerned that they haven’t been receiving regular updates as to the progress of the building, which they hope to change.

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