MERCEDES — After several years in limbo — with officers working out of a cramped public works building while prisoners have spent their stays in neighboring Weslaco — officials here have committed to renovating the Mercedes Police Department building on South Ohio Street that was once deemed unsafe for human occupation.
To celebrate the $3.2 million investment, officials here held a groundbreaking ceremony on the front steps of the station Wednesday morning.
“The decision to remodel was not hard — the financing was the important part,” Mercedes Mayor Oscar D. Montoya said after the ceremony.
He added that the city deserved no less.
“We felt that our citizens and our police department deserved the investment,” Montoya said.
Mercedes will pay for the project, in part, by using COVID-19 relief funds made available via the American Rescue Plan Act. The remainder of the funding will come from $8 million in certificates of obligation approved by a split vote of the Mercedes City Commission in 2021.
The renovation will include all new plumbing, walls, ceilings and air-conditioning units. The city was, however, able to salvage portions of the interior, including the jail cells.
But before officials could celebrate Wednesday’s groundbreaking, the building first had to go through extensive remediation.
“There was asbestos. There was lead. And there was mold,” Mercedes City Manager Alberto Perez said.
All of that hazardous material needed to be safely removed.
“We had to bring in… a professional team that specializes in removal of those components to make sure that it was done properly and with health-conscious efforts to make sure nobody got exposed,” Perez said.
That essentially left the building gutted down to its skeleton, allowing for ERO Architects, of McAllen, to plan a renovation from the ground up.
Mercedes officials initially vacated the South Ohio Street building in the summer of 2019 after conditions inside had become so deplorable it was deemed unsafe to continue housing prisoners there.
People frequently complained about the smell of sewage and mold which was exacerbated by faulty air-conditioning that kept temperatures warm.
As a result, the department came to an agreement with Weslaco police to house Mercedes prisoners at the Weslaco city jail.
The building’s abandonment came at a time of flux for the Mercedes Police Department.
Then-Chief Olga Maldonado, who had served the department for 30 years, retired in June 2019 amid speculation that the building’s poor condition was part of the reason for her ouster.
Just one month later, officials held a swearing in ceremony for her successor, Dagoberto “Dago” Chavez.
Chavez had been brought aboard the city as both an assistant police chief and assistant city manager by then-City Manager Sergio Zavala.
Together, Chavez and Zavala came up with the plan to move the police department across town to the public works building.
But the plan struggled to take flight, with the Mercedes City Commission wanting to keep the project’s costs down, causing ERO Architects to, in turn, struggle to provide concrete estimates due to the continually changing scope of the project.
Zavala, the former city manager, had promised the commission that retrofitting the public works building and housing Mercedes prisoners outside of the city would take six months.
But more than a year later, Eli Ochoa, principal of ERO Architects, delivered a presentation on the plans as they stood at the time.
Those plans included constructing an addition to the public works building for the jail cells and booking area.
However, Ochoa had scrapped plans — at the commission’s request — to build a sally port in favor of an exterior entrance protected only by an awning.
Ochoa warned of the dangers to police officers if the city continued to trim costs by literally shrinking the footprint and design of the public works building expansion.
Officials also didn’t have an answer for what would happen to the public works department itself, including its pricey equipment.
Ultimately, the police and public works departments have continued to share the same limited space over the last three years.
That’s caused the department to become disconnected from the people its officers are charged with serving and protecting, according to Assistant Chief Frank Sanchez.
Because of the crucial equipment housed at the public works building, access has largely been barred by a fence and closed gates.
“One of the challenges that we faced, obviously, was that communication with the public. Right now, if a citizen wants to go ahead and make a report or… speak with an officer, they have to almost make an appointment,” Sanchez said.
Furthermore, the cramped quarters have had officers nearly working on top of each other.
Police Chief Pedro Estrada said one of the things he’s most looking forward to once the renovations are complete is everyone having sufficient space to work comfortably.
“Everybody’s gonna have their own office now. It’s gonna be great,” Estrada said. “It’s a very good building.”
Renovating the police station isn’t the only investment Mercedes is making in its police department.
Recently, the city commission voted to approve a lease agreement with Enterprise for 18 vehicles — 15 model year 2023 Ford F-150 Police Responder models, one 2023 Chevrolet Suburban, and two 2023 Ford F-150 super crew cab trucks, according to a draft copy of the contract.
Mercedes is expected to take delivery on the vehicles in April.
The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to wreak havoc on the global supply chain, making it harder for the department to acquire vehicles as their fleet begins to age out of service, the mayor said.
“We were in a situation (where) we needed cars. And right now, there’s no cars available,” Montoya said, adding that the current wait for patrol units is as long as a year.
The high cost to maintain and repair such high usage vehicles also prompted budgetary concerns.
“It gets to the point where the repair cost or the maintenance costs of those vehicles is too high to continue to support,” City Manager Alberto Perez said.
Rather than paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle for just a handful of vehicles — which have to be fitted with customized aftermarket equipment — leasing allows Mercedes to obtain more units for similar cost, Perez said.
Mercedes will lease the 18 vehicles for five years. Each one will have a mileage cap of 20,000 miles per year.
The lease agreement comes at a cost of approximately $245,000 per year, plus a one-time aftermarket cost of $112,500 for a total cost of about $1.38 million.
The city will be able to recoup some equity on the vehicles at the end of the lease period. Perez said Mercedes plans on reinvesting that money back into another lease agreement.
