ROCHELLE — At its June 24 meeting, the Rochelle City Council unanimously approved a bid from Larson & Larson Builders for a $251,950 Rochelle Police Department locker room improvement project.

The RPD locker room is located in the basement of City Hall and improvements will include hot showers, male and female changing facilities, locker room updates and work on the firing range. Renovation of the area has not been done since RPD moved into the facility. The facility's current state doesn't have hot water for showers or a dedicated area for female officers. There are currently 18 total smaller lockers. Upgrades will consist of larger wardrobe lockers. 10 will be in the female area and 30 will be in the male area.

“The project will be expensive, but this is our forever home,” City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh said July 23. “It feels good to be moving forward with it. As we expand our police department and have more female officers, it's important that everybody has their own facilities and that we update restroom facilities and make sure everything is ADA compliant. There's equipment down there from the 1970s. I think because we've invested so much in staffing in our police department, we also need to make sure they have facilities that work for them that they can be proud of. They didn't have hot water in the showers down there. I feel an obligation to make sure our staff has access to good facilities and this project will improve that.”

Fiegenschuh said the project will be completed within the next six months. In recent years the city has evaluated building locations for each of its departments including Rochelle Municipal Utilities. The RPD locker room work represents a long-term investment in City Hall being the police department’s home.

The city council has expressed a desire to have most of the city’s services in the downtown area including City Hall, RPD, the Rochelle Fire Department and RMU utility billing, Fiegenschuh said.

“City Hall is an older building and we've made major improvements to our HVAC and boiler system here,” Fiegenschuh said. “It will be home for RPD long term and for all of us here in City Hall. We may look at moving things around in City Hall to free up more space for RPD, which is the major reason people come here and it takes up most of the space. I want to make sure they have additional space if they need it. I think this location is important.”

WIth a large number of recent retirements and new hires and a shortage of police officers in the hiring pool, Fiegenschuh stressed the importance of having up-to-date facilities and diversity in all city departments to aid in hiring and future work. 

Rochelle Fire has also seen recent hiring efforts as it expanded its department in the past year. The fire station has also been the site of dorm improvements for more privacy in bunks and an expansion of shower facilities. Firefighters are another hiring pool that has gotten smaller in recent years.

“We want to diversify all of our departments,” Fiegenschuh said. “Our public safety administration agrees with that. You have to start going to where people are to hire them and diversify your departments. You have to tailor your message to them. I think it's always important to diversify. We're seeing more female police officers and we'd like to have more female firefighters. It's a great profession in public service. We have amazing team members and we want to retain them. And as they move on, we want to replace them with talented people. Part of that is having a police department where the facilities are up to date and having a fire department with updated dorms.”