MILTON-FREEWATER — The hope of a new police station took a step toward becoming a reality last week.

If voters say yes to the idea, it could mean the town’s police force could someday have natural light, space to turn around and better air quality while working, officials said.

At its monthly meeting, members of the Milton-Freewater City Council voted unanimously Monday, Aug. 10, to hire an attorney as part of the process for presenting a bond to voters to build a new facility for law enforcement.

For nearly a century, the city’s police department has operated in the basement of City Hall on South Main Street.

The town of Milton in 1929 bought the former Columbia College that had been constructed by the regional Episcopal-Methodist Church organization in 1910, according to newspaper stories at the time.

Always small, the space has been squeezed further by the demands of modern technology, police equipment and space to store evidence, City Manager Linda Hall said Aug. 10.

Milton-Freewater Mayor Lewis Key called the area “a rabbit warren,” with a maze of little hallways ending in little offices.

When officers need to hold a person in a cell, it can be difficult to navigate the set of stairs leading down into the station, Key said.

The area, which Councilman Steve Irving termed “the bunker” during the Aug. 10 meeting, lacks adequate infrastructure to handle the needed network and electrical loads.

In times of emergencies, such as major crime events, large fires or wide-reaching power failures, the necessary number of dispatchers end up “almost literally working on top of each other,” Hall said, listing nearly 18 people who can be using the 2,600 square feet of space at any given time.

Over the years, office space has been sacrificed for storage needs, Hall said.

Basements, in general, bring their own challenges, the city manager pointed out.

“They are dark, dank and prone to flooding and radon gas,” she said.

The city crews are constantly working on fixing or trying to retrofit the station to make it as habitable as possible, but available resources and current conditions limit those efforts, Hall said.

Key said the idea of a new police station was broached a few years ago, but at about the same time, the community was focusing on getting a new school built, so it was decided to leave other things alone.

Now, it’s time to move things to the front burner, he said.

To that end Hall and Police Chief Doug Boedigheimer have begun working on the idea in earnest and are in the process of seeking architectural and design firms to assist with developing plans to present to city residents and to gather construction estimates.

The new station — initial plans call for a building of about 3,600 square feet — would be situated on an empty, city-owned lot behind City Hall and currently used for bus parking, Hall said.

The lot is about one-third of an acre in size, plenty big enough for what’s in mind, she said.

“We will not be proposing to build a grandiose building or anything extravagant. But we would like to build an adequate, comfortable area for our officers to do their vital office work in and our dispatchers to be comfortable for their long shifts responding to emergency calls,” Hall said.

A new building will need to include crime processing areas, space for computers and other technology used in police work, a public lobby, evidence, interview and meeting rooms, a spot for both evidence and safekeeping lockers, and a temporary holding facility for people who have been arrested.

The Milton-Freewater Police Department won’t have a jail, Hall said, explaining the city lacks the resources to meet Oregon’s numerous regulations to operate cells beyond a four-hour hold time.

The expectation is to have the police station concept ready to present to voters in the spring or fall of 2021, she added.

The city’s law enforcement employees “need a better working environment and space, and it is long overdue,” Hall said.