Colorado Springs police may be investigating whether Councilman Tom Gallagher walked into a garage that used to be a meth lab despite a warning sign stating that it’s illegal to occupy and that a violation carries a penalty of up to 90 days in jail.

Gallagher, a professional surveyor who has fallen on hard times, moved into a dilapidated home on East Brookside Street after the home where he was renting went into foreclosure.

The home on Brookside is in one of the city’s seediest neighborhoods, and the detached garage in back was once a meth lab that police say remains contaminated.

Developer Mark Morley, who owns the home with a business partner and is letting Gallagher and his family stay there in exchange for doing home improvements, said a police officer asked him whether he had given Gallagher permission to go in the garage.

“In the conversation I was having with the police officer the other night, we were talking about it and he asked, ‘Was I aware of Tom entering it?’” Morley said today.

“He just asked me, ‘Do I know if he did or not?’” Morley added.

Earlier this week, police spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said there’s an “active investigation” at the Brookside property, but he declined to go into details.

“I don’t know if it’s related to the meth lab or related to any other activities,” Whitlock said.

Morley, who is friends with Gallagher, said police also asked him whether the home where Gallagher is living was habitable.

The officer “made some comment that there’s spray paint on the back wall. Yeah, it’s flowers. It’s not like gang graffiti,” Morley said.

“Then I said to him, ‘It’s not the nicest place. I understand that. But I drive down I-25 every day and I would imagine that all those folks that are in the position of having to be in tents and under tarps, they’d look at this as the Hilton.’ It’s very unfortunate what’s going on.”

Gallagher said he wanted to use the garage to park his Corvette and store some belongings. When he saw the warning signs, Gallagher said he called police to find out what he had to do to get them removed.

He said new signs went up.

“The Code Enforcement Unit of the Colorado Springs Police Department has designated this property … as unfit for human habitation,” one of the signs states.

“It shall be unlawful for any person to use or occupy for human habitation … until the placard is removed,” it states.

Gallagher said he interprets that to mean no one can permanently live in the garage. He said that police are retaliating against him by banning use of the garage because he pushed a proposal to cut city employees’ salaries.

“I know there’s some animosity between the police and Tom and maybe the Fire Department and Tom,” Morley said.

“I don’t want to get in the middle of it,” he added. “I just hope it all blows over.”

Morley said he hasn’t done anything with the garage because he wants to redevelop the area.

“There are reasons you don’t want to take things down when they’re in a floodplain,” he said. “If it’s a matter of taking it down, I’d rather just keep it all boarded up and locked up because when we redevelop the area, the existing print of structures, it allows you to build, at a minimum, at least that existing footprint.”

Morley said he let Gallagher stay in the home out of generosity. Yesterday, he said, someone called him and told him they wanted to help Gallagher and his family. The person on the phone wanted to remain anonymous, he said.

“They said, ‘We would like to do something for Tom because we appreciate him going to bat for the citizens the way he does. We don’t want to go to the house and deliver this stuff. Where’s your office? We’d like to deliver it there,’” Morley said.

Twenty minutes later, Morley went outside his office. He said he found 10 to 12 sacks of groceries, which he delivered to Gallagher.

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