New MPS building, consolidated dispatch set up future opportunities

Police, fire move into new permanent home

By GEOFFREY WOEHLK | THE FORUM

MARYVILLE, Mo. — Despite all the regular issues massive projects like this must overcome, despite a negotiation that hadn’t been settled for 30 years and despite a pandemic popping up in the middle of construction, the new R. Keith Wood Maryville Public Safety facility began operation in earnest last fall — under budget and on time — marking the end of multiple journeys and the beginning of a new one.

A professional space

At the beginning of 2020, Maryville’s police and firefighters were working in a cramped, old grocery store, retrofitted in the 1970s, with narrow hallways and many shared spaces that had become a way of life.

Officers were making do with an evidence room secured by chicken wire from the top. There was only one interview room, a straight shot from a waiting area that could make for some awkward situations if a victim and a suspect were both in the building at the same time. And it wasn’t unheard of for a conference room to be home to evidence from a drug bust at 10 a.m., and an officer’s lunch at noon. Firefighters had to fit their equipment in limited space that wasn’t really made for it, and in the garage bay, even the soda smelled like diesel exhaust because of poor ventilation.

But by the end of 2020, all those issues, and many more, had been addressed in a building nearly three times as large, and set to grow into its full potential over the next three decades at least.

Maryville Police Chief Ron Christian talks with Bryan Williamson, Nucor-LMP production manager, during a tour of the new R. Keith Wood Public Safety Facility last year. The two are shown in a holding cell located in the facility. Christian said the cell is only meant as a temporary holding facility until its occupant can be

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“Everywhere I look, it’s such an upgrade,” said Maryville Police Chief Ron Christian in September when the new building opened. “But really, the overall theme is just that we have more specialty spaces. … We now have separate interview rooms, our dispatch office is more distinct, separate. Our booking room isn’t multifunctional, so we’re excited to be able to have a greater separation for those people who need our services.”

A much larger, secure evidence room that tracks comings and goings is designed to hold evidence for up to 30 years if necessary. And then there are the quality of life improvements, like larger locker rooms and lockers with built-in USB ports, and a multiuse, state-of-the-art conference room that will be used neither for lunch nor as a stopover for drug bust evidence.

“Just … silly little things that people laugh at when I tell them, but it means a lot to us, like having a restroom in the front lobby area,” Christian said. “You don’t really think about that, but (at the previous facility), if someone needs to use the restroom, they’ve got to have an officer come in and escort them into the back of the building, and if I’ve got someone in the back who’s been arrested — it’s just going to be (a) so much more professional environment, and hopefully a much more professional experience for people who have need of our services, whether it’s just a casual encounter or even if it’s an arrest or being a victim or whatnot. So we’re just excited about the increase in space and some of the specialty areas that allow us to do our jobs a lot more effectively.”

Some parts of the building aren’t just upgrades over existing facilities, but new ones that weren’t there before at all: A sally port that will allow officers to pull patrol cars with suspects in custody into a secure part of the building, for example, and the ability to transfer them to a new, secure holding cell if necessary.

Maryville Public Safety Fire Chief Phil Rickabaugh provides a tour of the fire bays during an October 2020 tour of the new R. Keith Wood Public Safety Facility. Rickabaugh talked a bit about some new filters located above the bays that will help collect diesel exhaust that always escapes when a fire truck is started. He said there is nothing like that at the city’s old facility and the filters should help keep the facility cleaner and lengthen its useful life.

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And a larger, 7,000-square-foot garage with five pull-through bays for fire trucks, capable of housing nearly every fire fighting implement the city owns plus more, designed from the ground up for the purpose, including dedicated showers, washers and dryers, and a new ventilation system to filter out exhaust.

“We’re extremely grateful and appreciative,” Christian said. “We’ve been truly blessed tremendously by this community and we really have high expectations that this facility will help us serve this community in a much more professional and upgraded manner. We will kind of raise those expectations.”

‘It’s finally happening’

The $4 million project began as an item on a wish list in 2012, and in the time between then and when shovel first hit dirt in 2019, the building’s namesake admitted that there were times when it looked like the obstacles might be insurmountable.

“Yeah,” said former MPS Director Keith Wood at the groundbreaking in 2019. “Almost every day there for a while.”

The first obstacle, like all massive projects, was the funding. Initially, the city planned to combine the new MPS headquarters with a new city hall, but both financial and space constraints nixed that plan early on. Instead, city officials focused on the MPS building, and voters endorsed the idea in 2017 through a capital improvement sales tax. Then, a deal for the land with the Maryville R-II school district came through, giving the project a home.

But one major obstacle that had eluded public safety and government officials for 30 years still loomed large: a consolidated 911 dispatch center. The building was to be constructed with a new, larger, secured dispatch center designed for just such a purpose, a “building within a building.”

All that remained was to overcome 30 years of disagreement between city and county officials on just how to combine their dispatch services in time for the new facility’s opening.

And after months of back-and-forth negotiations, that’s exactly what happened, with the historic agreement between the county and city reached just before the end of 2019.

“It’s been a 30-year project and, here we are, it’s finally happening,” said Jessica Rickabaugh in September, NRC dispatch supervisor, who led the planning and implementation of the new center. “I think it’s a big deal for Nodaway County residents to be able to call one communication center and us to be able to get them whatever they need. It’s really streamlining that process.

“And then having the updated equipment, we’re on track, ready to grow with the industry now. And that’ll be another good thing for our citizens.”

The new Northwest Regional Communications center, combining city and county employees, is now handling dispatch services for all of Nodaway County.

“One phone call is going to get you everything you need from police, fire or EMS,” Rickabaugh said. “… We’ll have at least two people on duty all the time, so we’ll dispatch for the city, the county, the ambulance (district) and the 10 rural fire districts.”

The center itself was constructed to be a hardened facility to withstand severe weather and keep communications intact during disasters. It was also designed with an eye toward regional expansion should the opportunity arise, including space for more terminals and wiring to accommodate any growth.

After the agreement was reached, Rickabaugh and dispatchers began a sprint to the dispatch center’s “go-live” date of Sept. 30, working overtime to set up and get trained on new systems that were replacing woefully outdated ones, and to ensure they all worked as needed. With the new equipment comes new software and new capabilities also geared toward the future.

Dispatch Supervisor Jessica Rickabaugh with Northwest Regional Communications provides a look at the new stations at the joint 911 dispatch center during a tour last fall. She said that while the previous center already had the monitors, they were not in such an ergonomic display. The chairs and desks also were selected based on ergonomic qualities. The desks can be raised or lowered for height, but also to the height of a standing desk, should the dispatcher need to shift positions.

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“We made that move so we can be one step closer to being able to do those next generation things, 911 things with video and texts,” Rickabaugh said. “Our area is not quite yet capable, but we are really close now. Having this new equipment gets us ready for as soon as the rest of the industry is ready for us.”

With consolidated dispatch, police and fire all under one roof, city officials expressed optimism that it would be their home for decades to come.

“The building has been designed, hopefully, to meet the needs of this community for at least 40, 50 years,” Christian said. “I don’t see any reason why it would not do that.”