Mayor says a public open house is being planned.
New home of the Frederick Police Department on East All Saints Street
Frederick, Md (KM) The time is getting near for the opening of the new Frederick Police Department headquarters on East All Saints Street. That’s according to Mayor Michael O’Connor who was a guest recently on WFMD’s “Morning News Express.:” “It is getting very close to being completed,:” he said. “We don’t have a firm announcement. We’re working now on identifying a date for a kind of public open house.”
He says the open house should take place some time before the Police Department moves in and begins operations. “We’re looking hopefully some time in June to do kind of an open house opportunity where the public will be able to come and walk through the facility before it gets sort of christened and locked down,”: says Mayor O’Connor.
The new headquarters was once the William Donald Schaefer building which housed the Department of Social Services. The City purchased the four-story, 65,000-square-foot structure in 2021 for use as a police headquarters, replacing the cramped facilities at the Frederick County Court House on West Patrick Street.
Last year, an incident came to light. It was a wire fraud scheme which cost the City of Frederick $280,000. The Mayor was asked about that. “We’ve turned the investigation over to whoever can investigate that. My guess is that whoever those individuals are, they’re in the wind,”: he says.
In a previous interview, Police Chief Jason Lando said the investigation was turned over to the Maryland State Police.
But the City came out ahead. ” The city is whole. Aside from the deductible that we would pay for any loss, whether it’s this kind of a loss, or we lose a dump truck in accident, the city has liability insurance that covers these types of things,” he said.
Despite that, Mayor O’Connor says the cost of construction work was not too steep. “On budget, largely on budget,”: he said. “There’s always unanticipated costs and things in there you couldn’t ‘t know. But nothing that’s blown the budget out of the water.”
By Kevin McManus