The city of Cape Girardeau has taken action to keep the costs of its police department from going through the roof.

By today, the department should have a new roof this time with insulation under it.

The new insulation is expected to save the department more than a thousand dollars a year. Cape Girardeau Police Lt. Dale Ratliff, head of the department's Planning and Standards Division, said the department's old roof had only minimal insulation built into its covering material.

The new roof, Ratliff said, is the first major renovation of the department's building at 40 South Sprigg. The building was constructed in 1974, he said, but the department didn't move in until 1975.

Work began on the roof about two weeks ago by Wesbar Roofing Co. of Festus, he said. The work was expected to be completed today, he said.

The overall cost to replace the roof is $31,569, said Ratliff. The cost of the insulation alone is $14,000.

City Code Inspector Butch Stidham said he didn't know how much money the insulation would save over a month's time. But he said: "That will pay itself back in about five years. We should save something like a $1,069 a year."

The department's average utility bill for fiscal year 1991 ran $2,802, said Mary Thompson, city collector. The cost for the year came out to be just over $33,600.

Ratliff said the new insulation would increase the building's insulation factor up to a minimum rating of R25.

Nancy Poston, public purchasing buyer for the city, said the insulation would be covered by rubber sheet roofing. Stidham said the insulation was added on top of the building's roof deck.

It is hoped the combination raises the insulation rating considerably higher than R25, Ratliff said. Stidham said an insulation rating of R25 is an industry-type standard.

Ratliff said the department's primary concern in replacing the roof is energy conservation to reduce heating and cooling costs. The roof does have some leaks, he said, but nothing major.

He pointed out some leak spots above his desk on the department's second floor. "It's just a few that's caused a little inconvenience for a couple of us," he said.

Stidham said consulting engineers out of St. Louis did an energy management audit of several city buildings in July 1987. They recommended insulation be added to the police department's ceiling assembly, he said.

"The roof was leaking anyway, so we had to do something on that. So this kind of worked in together real nicely," Stidham said.

The city, he said, had some loan money available for the insulation part of the project. The money, at 2 percent interest, was offered through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Stidham said the money is for energy conservation measures that will pay for themselves within a period of up to eight years.

Stidham said he believed the time period in which the building was constructed had to do with why the building originally had no separate insulation.

"It just wasn't that much of a concern as it is nowadays. We've become more aware of our energy usage."

Along with the roof's original covering material, he said, some insulation was provided to the building through the roof's lightweight concrete deck.

With the way the building is constructed, Stidham said, it was hard to install the insulation. He said the building's construction didn't really allow for the insulation to be installed from the inside, although it was considered.

"It would have been a very difficult and time-consuming job to do that," he said.

Because of the amount of insulation that had to be installed, Ratliff said, everything on the department's roof had to be raised, counting the heating units. Also, the units had to be totally disconnected, he said. Due to the lower temperatures, space heaters had to be put in a couple of secretaries' offices, he said.