Tax hike or not, council aims to build new police HQ

News

Uploaded: Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 9:15 am

by Gennady Sheyner / Palo Alto Weekly

It's not easy to ask voters for a tax increase when city coffers are flush with cash, but that is the awkwardly enviable position that members of the Palo Alto City Council find themselves in as they eye a November ballot measure.

Even if the voters shoot down the proposed increase to the city's hotel-tax rate that is recommended by city officials, the council will push forward with its most urgent and most complex infrastructure priority -- a new public-safety building.

That was the consensus of the council's Infrastructure Committee, which voted unanimously on Wednesday to make the public-safety building the city's top priority. The vote came after a broader discussion about the city's long list of needed infrastructure repairs, some of which would potentially be paid for with revenues from the hotel-tax hike.

The committee has yet to figure out what projects to include in the possible bond package. Despite the council's sense of urgency about a new police building, the project has consistently failed to attract the public. Recent polls confirmed the findings of past polls: While a bare majority might support the $57 million police headquarters, it would be difficult for the council to get the supermajority of voters needed to pass a bond. With its vote Wednesday, the committee signaled that the project should be pursued regardless of the November results, with existing funds if necessary.

City officials have been talking for more than a decade about the need to replace the small and seismically deficient police headquarters inside City Hall. The Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Committee, a citizen task force charged in 2010 with identifying the city's infrastructure priorities, described the existing headquarters as "unsafe and vulnerable." Yet the quest for a new police building has been riddled with setbacks and disappointments. In 2009, with the economy sagging and no imminent plans to fund the project, the city terminated its option to lease two properties on Park Boulevard that officials had hoped could house the new facility. And last month, developer Jay Paul Co. withdrew its offer to build a new police building in exchange for the city's permission to construct two office buildings next to the AOL headquarters at 395 Page Mill Road.

With an estimated price tag of $57 million, the public-safety building comprises more than a third of the city's budget on needed infrastructure repairs. City Manager James Keene likened the infrastructure picture to a stackable Matryoshka doll, with the public-safety building on the outside layer. Having a definite plan for funding this project, he noted, could help shift the conversation on paying for the other items on the long list, which under the most recent estimate adds up to about $155 million.

While a bond measure would help the council tackle some of the other gaping projects on the list -- including new downtown garages, a host of bike improvements and replacement of two obsolete fire stations -- members of the four-member committee agreed that the police building is important enough to be pursued with existing funding.

The rest is here:
Tax hike or not, council aims to build new police HQ