Laura Glesby photo
Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola introduces the ammo-storage amendment.
In a last-minute federal funding reallocation on Tuesday evening, alders unanimously voted to spend $250,000 in Covid-recovery aid on a new police ammunition storage unit.
After raising an order reallocating $11.75 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding — part of a series of votes by the Board of Alders enacting the city budget on Tuesday evening — Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola introduced an amendment.
The amendment allocated an additional $250,000 toward a pre-constructed, standalone storage container for ammunition (primarily to load guns) for the New Haven Police Department.
That $250,000, according to Finance Committee Chair Adam Marchand, came from interest on the city’s one-time, pandemic-relief ARPA funding.
The amendment received unanimous support from alders. No public hearing or public presentation on the storage facility had occurred before the vote.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that the new storage system would be larger and more secure than the department’s current ammunition storage area, which he described as about the size of a “closet.”
The new unit would “give us the ability to buy more” ammunition at a time, and take advantage of lower prices, Jacobson said.
Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Manmeet Bhagtana said that the new storage center would be less about expanding the department’s storage capacity and more about ensuring that the ammunition is stored in a more secure manner.
The police department could not provide precise details on the size or capacity of either the current storage space or the proposed container by Wednesday afternoon, though Bhagtana estimated that the new unit would be 40 by 8 by 8 feet.
She described it as a “pre-built container,” to be located at 200 Wintergreen Ave. by the police department’s training facilities.
On Wednesday, Marchand said that alders had not received written documents about the proposal, which arose “toward the end of the budget process,” but that alders received a “verbal briefing” about it.
The $250,000 allocation “adds to the considerable fund investment in public safety equipment and infrastructure made in previous ARPA allocations approved by this body,” said DeCola while introducing the amendment, alluding to prior ARPA funds used to fund Shotspotter gunshot-detection technology and hundreds of surveillance cameras.
Marchand added on Wednesday that the amendment will “make sure that the police have the facilities that they need to do the job they need to do.”
No timeline for the new storage unit was available on Tuesday. “I don’t know, because it just got approved,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson, Colon, and Marchand said they expect to have more information about the project this week.