When the Lathrop City Council approved a contract for the construction of a property and evidence storage facility at the city’s corporation yard on Louise Avenue earlier this year, it was only for the building itself.

To outfit the building with the necessary shelving and storage will cost an additional $562,470.

The council approved the expenditure last week.

Sufficient funding to cover such an expense was included in the budget already adopted by the council, so if they sign off on the request next week a budget amendment will not need to be introduced.

According to the staff report, a facility for the storage and preservation of legal evidence will require motorized and fixed shelving, cold storage, a locked safe for secure storage, and equipment necessary for the handling and retrieval of evidence.

When the Lathrop Police Department first launched in June of 2022, the City of Lathrop had struck up an agreement with the City of Ripon to provide contracted services while the agency got its feed underneath it – initially providing both dispatch services as well as property and evidence storage.

Using land that it already had available, Lathrop opted to construct both a temporary animal shelter facility as well as the property and evidence facility at the Lathrop Corporation Yard on Louise Avenue – a facility where the city also operates a plant that removes arsenic from the city’s drinking water.

Part of the high cost of the equipment necessary to outfit the evidence facility is the specialized nature of the pieces themselves – which includes drug cabinets, evidence lockers, wardrobe lockers, a forensic drying cabinet, a fuming chamber, a humidity chamber, and a fuming hood.

But the bulk of the total cost will be the high-density shelving where non-specialty evidence will likely end up – at a cost of $440,700 broken down into $347,000 in materials and $93,700 for installation.

With a 10 percent contingency, the potential total cost of the project could be $618,717.