Beverly Mayor Bill Scanlon's continuing focus on improving the city's infrastructure deserves praise, and was likely a major factor in his winning reelection last November. But it is disappointing to hear that what is perhaps the city's most pressing, but least appreciated, need in terms of capital improvements — a new police station — has once again been put on the back burner.
The Beverly police headquarters, squeezed into a tiny annex of City Hall, has long been an embarrassment. But it lacks the sort of constituency that advocates for new schools or library improvements. Most who have business there simply want to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Yet the fact that the Police Department has gone so long without a new station, while most communities small (Middleton) and large (Salem) have built new ones, is a sad commentary on the regard with which public-safety functions are held in the Garden City.
Scanlon has long advocated construction of a joint police-fire station on property within the Cummings Center. But in his State of the City speech Monday, he revealed that the project will now likely have to wait until the city begins to reap the tax revenue from new development generated by construction of the proposed new interchange at Route 128 and Brimbal Avenue.
While that project has no greater advocate than the mayor (whose interest likely persuaded Cummings to make a recent purchase of property in the area), no date has been set for the start of construction on the new road and overpass, and its funding remains uncertain.
Meanwhile, Scanlon is proposing to spend some $6 million on street, sidewalk and sewerage improvements, along with repairs to City Hall and the main library on Essex Street. And having just spent $81 million on a new high school and given the need for a new middle school, he told councilors and others Monday, construction of new public safety and public services facilities will simply have to wait.
It's a credit to the men and women of the Beverly Police Department that they continue to perform their jobs well despite having to work from satellite locations and a headquarters building that ranks near the bottom of those in the region in terms of age and utility. The inadequacy of the current station has been well-documented over many decades now.
Remedying the situation should be a matter of highest priority for the mayor and the community.
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