Secession Backers Fighting Police, Fire Bond Measure

By DAVID GREENBERG

Staff Reporter

Backers of a bond measure to upgrade and expand police and fire facilities hope that increased public concern for safety prompted by Sept. 11 will boost their campaign despite the failure of similar such measures twice before.

Unlike those failures in 1995 and 1999, Proposition Q, which will be on the March 5 ballot, earmarks a portion of the $600 million request to build a new fire dispatch center a strategy that proponents acknowledged is an attempt to leverage the spotlight placed on New York’s rescue efforts following the attacks.

“We thought about doing this at the last minute after Sept. 11,” said Adena Tessler, chief deputy for Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who chairs the council’s public safety committee. “We realized that (keeping) the city’s main emergency operations center and dispatch complex, which are under City Hall East, was probably not a good idea. It needed to be relocated and rebuilt.”

The measure would increase property taxes on the average-price home ($185,900) by $34.49 per year for 24 years.

If approved by a two-thirds majority, Proposition Q would fund a combined emergency operations-fire dispatch center downtown, new police stations in the Mid-Wilshire and San Fernando Valley areas and new bomb squad facilities downtown and in the Valley.

Funds also would be earmarked to tear down and replace the Rampart, Hollenbeck, Harbor and West Valley police stations, as well as the metropolitan jail. Improvements would be made to fire stations in the Harbor, Valley, East L.A., West L.A. and South Central L.A. areas.

But it won’t be easy garnering the necessary two-thirds vote. Several factors are working against passage, not the least of which is the hesitancy of many residents to approve additional spending amid a souring economy and a $155 million shortfall in the city’s budget. The city also has an abysmal record, critics charge, for using revenues for their intended purpose from previously approved bond measures.

Valley opposition

Meanwhile, Valley voters continue to cry foul at being short-changed in the amount of tax dollars spent in their area of the city. Leaders of Valley VOTE, which are pushing for a measure on the November ballot to secede from the rest of the city, comprise the bulk of the No on Prop. Q Committee that is staging an e-mail campaign to thwart the March 5 measure.

“I think it’s unlikely to pass,” said Jeff Brain, president of Valley VOTE and a No on Q committee member. “People are fed up with the city not meeting its obligations of prior bonds. Projects that are supposed to get built don’t get built.”

Valley VOTE members are still steamed that a North Valley police station that was part of an approved $176 million bond measure approved in 1989 still has not been constructed.

But possibly the biggest challenge is the prospect of a disproportionately high number of fiscal conservatives voting in the hotly contested Republican gubernatorial primary race. With Gov. Gray Davis facing no serious primary opposition, his backers are less likely to cast votes.

“Turnout is working against the proponents,” said Richard Lichtenstein, owner of Marathon Communications Inc., an L.A. consulting firm not involved in the measure.

He added that many voters are turned off by the feud between Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief Bernard Parks, who the mayor refused to endorse for a second five-year term.

“These other events are distracting,” said Lichtenstein. “Voters on a bond measure like this want it clear, straight and concise. If there are collateral issues, which tend to confuse them, they are more inclined to vote no.”

Two previous bond measures, both billed Proposition 1, garnered at least 61 percent of the vote but missed the two-thirds mark. Those measures called for $744 million for police, fire and paramedic facilities in April 1999 and $171 million for police facilities in June 1995.

But voters approved Proposition F in November 2000, providing $532.6 million to construct or replace 19 fire facilities, including nine in the Valley, as well as five animal care facilities, including one in the Valley.

Now, Proposition Q opponents argue, there is more of a need to fill the 1,000-officer shortfall in the police department than to create additional facilities.

But supporters, who are staging a $400,000 campaign through donations from community and business leaders, have touted the West Valley station in Reseda as a prime example of the poor working conditions some police endure. The facility was constructed in 1960 for a staff of 92 people. Today, 380 people work there.

“When bond opponents say we shouldn’t build facilities because there’s no one to staff them, they are not telling the truth,” said Steve Afriat, campaign manager for Proposition Q. “The fact is we need more facilities to house the personnel that we have.”

The measure also calls for the establishment of a five-person citizen oversight committee with two members appointed by Hahn and three by Council President Alex Padilla to monitor the projects, budget and construction schedule.

Proposition Q

The $600 million raised by the measure would fund:

– A new downtown emergency operations/ fire dispatch center

– New police stations in Mid-Wilshire and the San Fernando Valley

– New bomb squad facilities downtown and in the Valley

– Replacement of the Rampart, Hollenbeck, Harbor and West Valley police stations

– Replacement of the metropolitan jail

– Improvements to fire stations in the Harbor, Valley, East L.A., West L.A., South Central areas.