Max Bryan
The Detroit News
(TNS)
Voters in two Metro Detroit suburbs will head to the polls Tuesday to decide on multimillion-dollar bond proposals to modernize their police and fire departments and accommodate something neither city initially planned to have when their facilities were built decades ago: women.
Novi is seeking voter approval of a $120 million bond to build a new public safety headquarters, two new fire stations and modernize another station. And Livonia is seeking approval of a $150 million bond to finance a new police station, library, public green space and renovations to the western Wayne County suburb’s five fire stations.
Novi officials said when their current facilities were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they weren’t designed to be co-ed. The city now has 15 female officers, who make up more than 20% of its staff of 73. And it has five women in the fire department, which has 28 full-time and 70 part-time workers.
Livonia’s fire department has five female firefighters out of 82, while its police department has 20 female officers on its force of 150, or 13%.
These numbers are colliding with a lack of female locker rooms, showers, sleeping quarters and changing areas at the cities’ fire departments. Novi police have enough lockers for their female officers, but they’re out of space, said Erick Zinser, Novi’s public safety director.
“No one, I think, would have guessed that we would have (more than 20%) of our sworn staff of police officers be women,” said Novi Communications Director Sheryl Walsh-Molloy.
To pay for the new facilities, Livonia would repay the bond debt over 25 years through a 1.43-mill property tax to help finance renovations for the suburb’s five fire stations, a new police station, public green space and a library. If approved, the millage would cost a homeowner in the city of 92,100 residents $1.43 per $1,000 of their property’s taxable value.
Novi’s proposed $120 million bond would be financed and repaid through a 1-mill property tax increase over 25 years to build a new public safety headquarters and two new fire stations and renovate a fourth station.
Part of the money from these bonds would go toward updating locker rooms, showers and sleeping quarters to accommodate a workforce that looks different than the one envisioned when the current police and fire stations were originally built.
Advocates said public safety facilities need to accommodate women from the get-go, as opposed to being retrofitted.
“Regardless of what’s under your uniform, if you’re a good person and you can get the job done, you should be allowed, as part of your written contract with your employer, to have a place where you can use the restroom,” said Rachael Stabell, vice president of Women In Fire and retired lieutenant paramedic out of Colorado Springs.
Even some opponents of the proposed bond increase want women to have adequate facilities. Jim Biga, a leader of the group “Livonia Vote NO on $150M Bond/Millage Proposal,” argued the Livonia police and fire departments were “held hostage” in the millage proposal to earn public support.
Biga also contended the existing police station isn’t in as bad a condition as city leaders make it out to be. He said the city could add to the current station instead of building a new one.
But that in no way affects his support for women to have adequate facilities, he said.
“They should have their own privacy. They shouldn’t have to share a