Evidence Building
Program Description
The City of Great Falls Police Department is proposing the construction of a dedicated evidence storage and management facility. This building would house physical pieces of evidence, related record keeping systems, and staffing. Currently, evidence is stored within the Police Station. The current storage area has been repeatedly adapted to increase capacity but has reached the limits of the current space.
Why this matters
There are a wide array of rules and regulations that govern the retention of pieces of evidence. Some retention periods are set by the prosecuting attorney and can vary on a case by case basis. Some rules are explicit. Homicide, for example requires that items related to solved cases be held for 75 years and evidence for unsolved cases must never be relinquished. Records Bureau personnel estimate that the Police Department currently has nearly 340,000 individual pieces of evidence in its possession. On a typical year the Department may take in between approximately 12,000 to 15,000 items and disposes of, at most, 10,000. Some years only result in the purging of 2,000 to 3,000 items. As the operations of the Department increase in tandem with the efforts of the Crime Task Force the need for increased evidentiary archives will only increase. This proposal will secure the necessary capacity for the next twenty plus years.
How is this eligible?
The United States Department of the Treasury allows local governments that lost revenue (i.e. lost taxes, utility payments, etc.) during the COVID-19 pandemic to use ARPA funds, up to the amount of revenue lost, for government services. This category is extremely discretionary and allows for funds to be used for any service traditionally provided by a government. Treasury’s Final Rule allowed local governments to claim a standard allowance of $10 million in lost revenue. The City of Great Falls (which did not experience financial losses during the pandemic) took this standard allowance and may spend up to $10 million of its total allocation to pay for its traditional government services.
Status Updates
The City put out an RFP on 11/27/22 for a design consultant to perform comprehensive, construction-level designs for the Evidence Expansion Project. The City will receive proposals from qualified design consultants on 12/21/22. The City plans to award the design contract by February 2023. The City plans to have design completed and solicit for construction contractors in November 2023, and is targeting to break ground on construction in May 2024.
Design work is ongoing and engineering estimates are being revised. The project is estimated to go out to bid for construction in November 2023.
