Anyone who’s been to a West Deer meeting since December has seen the township’s new digs.
But they’ll be able to see more than the public meeting room next month, when the township plans an open house and tours, during which residents can ask questions about the $10 million building.
The one-story building has been about 10 years in the making, spans 17,600 square feet and was built without a tax increase.
The building has been in use since December.
The biggest differences from the township’s former building, according to supervisors Chairwoman Beverly Jordan, are the police department and the meeting room for the board and community. Jordan has been on the board for eight years and was involved in the project almost since its inception.
“This is something I am personally very proud of and is much overdue,” Jordan said. “In the older building, you could literally pull bricks out of the wall.”
The police department, at 8,840 square feet, includes cubicles and desks for 18 officers and offices for the sergeant, chief and assistant chief.
The meeting room is 4,250 square feet, with ample space for residents to attend meetings and the opportunity for sports organizations and local groups to use the community room for free. For meetings that potentially overflow, the building has monitors to stream the meetings to other locations.
The budget for the project was around $11 million but came in almost $500,000 under that. They also are waiting for an energy credit of about $300,000, according to Jordan.
Jordan credits the savings to the work of Township Manager Daniel Mator, who secured $2.5 million in grants, something Mator had been working on since 2015.
There’s still some work to be done on the building, not to exceed $174,000, Jordan said. The township detailed the cost of the project in a newsletter sent out to residents April 18.
On social media, though, there still is a frenzy regarding the project and what it might be costing residents.
“A lot of people are throwing different costs out there for clicks, and those numbers are not accurate,” Jordan said.
“We have gone through a heavy auditing process, we are a financially responsible town and have been saving for years,” she said.
On Saturday, May 10, residents will be able to ask more questions and get a tour of the new facility.
“This is something that West Deer deserves. We deserve to have a great space,” Jordan said.
