Former TTPS leaders not surprised by $6m bill to repair CoP’s residence

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is urg­ing the pub­lic to look be­yond the pro­posed $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for re­pairs to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St James, and in­stead ex­am­ine whether pub­lic as­sets are be­ing man­aged with sound judge­ment.

Re­fer­ring to the his­toric prop­er­ty at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Grif­fith said, “I would cau­tion against mak­ing the $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the re­fur­bish­ment of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in­to a ma­jor con­tro­ver­sy with­out first un­der­stand­ing the na­ture, his­to­ry and struc­tur­al re­quire­ments of the build­ing.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that $6 mil­lion is a sub­stan­tial sum, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the many needs with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Grif­fith said the ser­vice typ­i­cal­ly re­ceives an an­nu­al bud­get of about $3 bil­lion.

How­ev­er, he stressed that the res­i­dence is no or­di­nary gov­ern­ment build­ing.

“The com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence at St James Bar­racks is a his­toric build­ing, over 150 years old, which can be re­gard­ed as an im­por­tant part of our na­tion­al her­itage,” he said.

He ex­plained that restor­ing a build­ing of such age and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance is far more com­plex than car­ry­ing out re­pairs on a con­ven­tion­al struc­ture.

“It is not sim­ply a mat­ter of re­plac­ing plumb­ing, up­grad­ing elec­tri­cal sys­tems or re­paint­ing walls. Any ma­jor re­fur­bish­ment must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the preser­va­tion of the build­ing’s orig­i­nal ar­chi­tec­ture, struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty and his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter.”

Hav­ing lived at the res­i­dence dur­ing his tenure as com­mis­sion­er, Grif­fith de­fend­ed the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion, not­ing that her­itage preser­va­tion re­quire­ments of­ten make restora­tion projects tech­ni­cal­ly de­mand­ing and cost­ly.

“For that rea­son, I do not con­sid­er the al­lo­ca­tion of $6 mil­lion, in it­self, to be un­rea­son­able, pro­vid­ed that the ex­pen­di­ture is jus­ti­fied by the ac­tu­al scope of works, sup­port­ed by a prop­er ten­der­ing process and sub­ject­ed to the nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial over­sight.”

Grif­fith said on­ly a few thou­sand dol­lars were spent on ba­sic main­te­nance dur­ing his tenure.

“This was a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion,” he said.

“At the time, there were nu­mer­ous op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies and long­stand­ing re­quire­ments with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice that de­mand­ed im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion. I was there­fore un­will­ing to com­mit sub­stan­tial re­sources to a ma­jor restora­tion project while those more press­ing needs re­mained out­stand­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, one of the main rea­sons for the prop­er­ty’s de­te­ri­o­ra­tion has been its pro­longed lack of oc­cu­pan­cy.

“To the best of my knowl­edge, apart from my pe­ri­od as com­mis­sion­er, the res­i­dence has been large­ly un­oc­cu­pied by suc­ces­sive com­mis­sion­ers over ap­prox­i­mate­ly the last 21 years,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that many com­mis­sion­ers opt­ed to re­main in their pri­vate homes while con­tin­u­ing to re­ceive a hous­ing al­lowance, rather than oc­cu­py the of­fi­cial res­i­dence.

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned com­ments by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­gard­ing the con­di­tion of the prop­er­ty’s swim­ming pool.

“Any­one fa­mil­iar with swim­ming pool main­te­nance would recog­nise that treat­ing al­gae and restor­ing the clar­i­ty of pool wa­ter can or­di­nar­i­ly cost just a few hun­dred dol­lars, cer­tain­ly less than $1,000 in rou­tine cir­cum­stances,” Grif­fith said.

“The con­di­tion of the pool wa­ter is there­fore a very poor ex­am­ple to use when at­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy a $6 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment.”

An­oth­er for­mer com­mis­sion­er, Stephen Williams, said the of­fi­cial res­i­dence was al­ready un­oc­cu­pied when he as­sumed of­fice in 2012 be­cause of its de­te­ri­o­rat­ed con­di­tion. Williams said his pre­de­ces­sor, the late Dwayne Gibbs, had al­so cho­sen not to live at the res­i­dence af­ter tak­ing of­fice in 2010 be­cause of its state.

“An as­sess­ment was made by Ude­cott and they es­ti­mat­ed the cost of re­pairs to be in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion,” Williams said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that no sig­nif­i­cant bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion was ever made to un­der­take the work.

Williams ex­plained that, be­cause of fund­ing con­straints, the TTPS was forced to un­der­take re­pairs in­cre­men­tal­ly over sev­er­al years us­ing small an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tions.

“While it is not ac­cept­able prac­tice to ef­fect re­pairs un­der the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme in small bro­ken-up projects, we were forced to use the small an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tions over sev­er­al years and com­plete the re­pairs around 2018.”

He wel­comed Alexan­der’s an­nounce­ment, de­scrib­ing it as good news for the TTPS.

His­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh al­so said he was not sur­prised by the pro­posed re­pair cost, ar­gu­ing that T&T has a his­to­ry of al­low­ing pub­lic build­ings to de­te­ri­o­rate.

“Here in T&T, we al­low pub­lic build­ings to be ne­glect­ed and de­gen­er­ate,” he said.

Teelucks­ingh re­called that mil­lions had been spent over the past decade restor­ing ma­jor his­toric build­ings, in­clud­ing White­hall, Pres­i­dent’s House, the Red House and Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle.

He al­so claimed that his­toric build­ings out­side north Trinidad of­ten re­ceive less at­ten­tion, cit­ing the de­te­ri­o­rat­ed state of the Li­on House in Ch­agua­nas.

While recog­nis­ing the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence, Teelucks­ingh ques­tioned whether funds spent on restor­ing her­itage build­ings could be bet­ter di­rect­ed else­where.

“I need to ask cit­i­zens - could some of that mon­ey for re­pairs of these build­ings have been bet­ter used to build more hos­pi­tals or buy dial­y­sis ma­chines for our hos­pi­tals?

“Or could that mon­ey be used to re­pair the many pot­holes? Or help build hos­pices in cen­tral and south Trinidad? Yes.”

Nev­er­the­less, Teelucks­ingh main­tained that the pro­posed $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion ap­peared rel­a­tive­ly mod­est. He sug­gest­ed the cre­ation of a ded­i­cat­ed re­pair fund fi­nanced through de­duc­tions from par­lia­men­tar­i­ans’ salaries to help pre­serve his­toric pub­lic build­ings and re­duce the bur­den on tax­pay­ers.