The Maple Valley Council approved a small rental space for a police substation in the Four Corners area during the Sept. 10 council meeting
The substation will be located at the apartments behind Safeway, according to Laura Philpot, the city manager of Maple Valley.
She said it’s about $1 per year, for 10 years to rent the space. Then, the city just needs to pay utilities, paint the walls, put in carpet. Then it should be good to go, she added.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us to have more police presence in Four Corners. So if they need to do some paperwork or plug in for a minute, they can stop in there,” Philpot said.
Philpot also said she thinks it could increase overall police presence in the area because there is a gun range outside of Ravensdale, so unincorporated officers are welcome to use the substation as well.
“(They can) use the bathroom, use it as a space to do paperwork. It just provides that additional police presence in kind of that busiest part of town,” she said.
To have this substation, no extra officers would be needed to man it. Philpot said it will not be manned 24/7, it’s just an extra space for current officers to have more access to the city, more visibility and could even provide and extra place for citizens to meet up with officers if they need to report something.
Philpot said they have not worked out all the kinks yet. They don’t know what hours would looks like or anything like that.
“It’s new so we haven’t really worked out exactly what that looks like,” she said.
Although this space will be utilized by both officers and citizens, Philpot said it should not be people’s go-to place to find police.
“At this point it’s just going to see how it goes and let the officers use it as additional space to get online, to do their paperwork, to go to the bathroom, to meet a citizen and so it’s not like people can be like, ‘This is where I go.” People should still come to the main police station if they need to reach somebody in person,” Philpot explained.
The lease for the substation will be routed this week and then the substation should be open in November, according to Philpot.
