The Ego Project: What Davis and Wiersma won’t admit

Paul Wiersma and Chief Derek Davis should be ashamed of themselves. Not for proposing a new police building, cities weigh capital needs all the time, but for the relentless, manipulative, […]

Paul Wiersma and Chief Derek Davis should be ashamed of themselves. Not for proposing a new police building, cities weigh capital needs all the time, but for the relentless, manipulative, and increasingly absurd campaign they continue to run in service of it. After years of inflating costs, suppressing alternatives, and hiding behind buzzwords like “enabling space,” we now find ourselves staring down a projected $110 million police equipment and facility bill in a city with a $20.8 million annual infrastructure funding gap. And still, no one on council is willing to pump the brakes.

Yesterday, city council heard testimony from the engineers and architects now leading the project. The figure has jumped again: the architects now expect the cost to exceed $81 million, not including equipment. Let that sink in. This project has grown from a $30 million estimate to an $81 million placeholder to an open-ended monstrosity, and the people pushing it hardest are the same ones benefiting from its growth.

Mayor Mike Bradley asked the question: don’t these architects stand to profit from the very project they’re estimating? The answer, of course, is yes. They admitted the estimate was generous, and that delaying construction would lead to 30 to 40 percent higher costs. Convenient.

Meanwhile, Davis and Wiersma continue to pretend this is out of their hands. Davis told council, with a straight face, “We're not building this building because it's a good idea. We're building this building because it's required by law.” He offered no explanation for which part of the Community Safety and Policing Act mandates a $110 million palace decked out with all his latest gadgets. Just the vague threat of legal noncompliance, used like a club.

And it gets worse. Davis then added, “This building is not adequate today,” and later admitted he didn’t even know the square footage of the current facility until recently. This is the man leading the largest capital ask in city history.

Let’s not forget the report the police themselves commissioned in 2024. Dillon Consulting’s Building Condition Assessment stated clearly: the existing police headquarters could be brought up to code and accessibility standards for approximately $4 million. That’s right, four million. Not 110. And yet Wiersma now tells council that delaying this project would only make it more expensive. This is beyond pathetic at this point.

It takes a special kind of stubbornness to ignore your own evidence. But what we’re witnessing isn’t just institutional blindness, it’s ego. Wiersma and Davis have anchored themselves so deeply to this project that backing down would feel like failure. So instead of reassessing, they double down, draping themselves in the language of duty, compliance, and modernization.

They even refuse to consider shared space. Davis insisted that fragmenting services would pose operational risks. But this, too, is a straw man. Other municipalities have managed shared models for years. What Davis and Wiersma really seem to fear is losing control, not just over space, but over the narrative.

Because if the public starts to ask the obvious question, why not build a smaller support facility for $10 or $15 million to handle overflow? Or lease space downtown for training and storage? Or rethink the organizational model altogether? Well then the entire justification collapses.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about legacy. Wiersma wants to cut a ribbon. Davis wants a modern fortress with his name on the plans. And the architects want a big, beautiful invoice.

If Wiersma and Davis won’t feel shame, we’ll have to do it for them. Because shame is a civic duty when leaders refuse to feel it. And no matter how high they stack the budget, no matter how many vague threats they issue about legal mandates and future inflation, the truth is still sitting quietly in their own report: $4 million could solve all the problems that they claim to have and then they can get back to their jobs keeping our community safe.

We could fix the building. We could fix the city. But not while this fantasy stays alive.